Saturday, 2 August 2014

‘Kill’em! Strangle’em! Don’t let go! Kill’em! Kill’em! Kill’em ALL!!’

So says Chucky in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, capturing rather neatly the dark territory children enter alarmingly often and quickly with unfettered imagination.

Play can be profoundly creative and amoral. It gives licence to the violence of make-believe. It sets few bounds. It rarely apologises. It is the kitten’s enjoyable rehearsal of a kill.

Something of that liberating darkness pervades much of the new work at Union Gallery, a group exhibition by seven artists invited to respond to Child’s Play as a theme by gallery director Alison Auldjo.

I am new to the work of Mary Archibald, and pleasantly unsettled by the rumpled, rottten-potato quality of her effigies. ‘Ma Hoop’ and ‘Ma Ba’ recall the feral qualities of Archibald’s own childhood. She speaks of ‘bringing to life’ these pieces, of letting her inner ‘bad girl out to play’. I found ‘The Christening’ absolutely terrifying.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

The Union Gallery celebrates its anniversary this month with a group exhibition featuring work by some of the artists who shown here over the previous five years.

No particular theme prevails, although there’s a general lightness of touch which matches the season and the sunshine-flooded premises.

What follows is a selection of personal favourites, from which others are omitted mostly for reasons of space or some difficulty in photographing them adequately. More images will follow later in the month.

First up is Tadeusz Deregowski’s postcard-sized oil, in which he has reached by his own circuitous route a quickening of texture which reminded me of Cathy Campbell’s ‘Afternoon Spider Plant’, shown here last year

Friday, 6 June 2014

The Union Gallery this month features the first ever joint showing in Edinburgh of work by husband and wife Jim McCutcheon and Linda Downie.

Really is an exhibition of strong contrasts and subtle similarities, of memorable images which often raise as many questions as they answer. If there is one thing of which one can be certain here, it is that reality, in Really, defies definition, and can certainly not be relied upon.

Perhaps the most obvious starting point is McCutcheon’s ‘I didn’t do it’ and ‘It wasn’t me’: identical figures of naked boys leaning awkwardly, uncomfortably, against the wall, their gaze cast up, hands tucked behind, elongated chests and genitals exposed and vulnerable.

They are distinguished only by the colour of their ‘skins’ and ‘irises’.

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

There comes a point when words are no longer enough in talking about the works of Jenny Matthews.

Either you get these paintings or you don’t. And if you do, and you love them, you can either spend hours analysing the details of petal and butterfly wing, leaf, stamen and bee leg; or you can step back and unashemedly go ‘Ooooh’ like a child at some particularly enchanting firework display.