Richard Healy and Gemma Holt

Sierra Metro

The sixth chapter of E.H. Gombrich’s 1979 book The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art provides a ‘unique language’ through which Richard Healy and Gemma Holt (in a new creative collaboration instigated and supported by the gallery) have considered the bonds and hierarchies that exist between pattern and object, whilst effecting to explore the divergent and often contentious relationship that exists between fine art and design practice.

Gombrich’s chapter begins with discussion of the kaleidoscope. Invented in 1816 as a scientific tool and named after the Ancient Greek for ‘beautiful form’, it quickly became appropriated as a toy, creating thrills and wonderment at its ability to subvert the natural order and familiar ways of seeing. Similarly in Shapes and Things, common and familiar order has been displaced and recontextualised, and whilst there is beauty here, it’s of a strange, awkward type, characterized by compositional peculiarity and visual clashes- a beauty that necessitates observation from many perspectives and allowed to unravel and reveal itself over time.

The ‘fruitful tension between functional and ornamental hierarchies’ noted by Gombrich, appears to be of significant concern in the exhibition. Objects sit awkwardly in this interstice between function and ornament- the mirrors, the pouffes, the lighting, even the curtains have an inferred domestic purpose- yet their installation in the gallery renders them untouchable and facile. Two polarized exceptions exist: Holt’s hexagonal plinth, built and utilized with the specific purpose of serving Healy’s projection, and the fake wall segment installed by Healy, adorned by his Studio Plant Study II, which sits uniquely as an object of sheer decoration.

Closer consideration and inspection of the designed elements themselves, provides further disquieting distancing from the familiar. Etched into the mirrors is a malevolent arrangement of sawtoothed forms, the three pouffes- stripped of their cordial covers sit together like naked chopped sections of a superfluous ornamental pillar, the curtains hover at a disconcerting height above the floor like mischievous apparitions, purposefully concealing segments of the space. This conflicting disposition in the objects occurs similarly in the artists’ use of colour. The clash of coral against grey strains and upsets the eye- yet the vibrant glow of the lunar pendant, first encountered as a haze through a curtain or a tantalizing reflected blaze in a mirror, prompts a desire to bask in its glow. Its night-light blush, rhythmically seeping from fuchsia into aquamarine and turquoise, intimating warmth and comfort against the cold stone background.

As time passes, a considered grouping of objects becomes apparent. Each of the three curtains is paired with its ‘own’ selected elements that it shields and protects. Despite these individual arrangements, there is a distinct sense of lopsidedness to the composition overall. Given that Gombrich remarks that ‘symmetry implies cohesion’, it would seem that the artists have consciously shunned a more predictable order in favour of something more dynamic and less visually comfortable. Gombrich also discusses the importance of the ‘centre’- how the kaleidoscope draws the eye into the middle and how we unconsciously esteem centrality more generally (in religious iconography, ceremonial events etc). Shapes and Things has no centre. The middle of the gallery is empty of objects- barring a curtains edge hanging vaguely nearby- from this central viewpoint the balance of the objects presented is out of line.

Healy’s projected video seems to act as something of a synopsis of the exhibition content. It presents a perpetual conveyor of analogous elements: fractal geometric shapes, minimalist creations and monochromatic segments of pattern. The effect is immersive and hypnotic, and once you lose yourself in the visuals they work to echo, not only the close vicinity, but provide a kaleidoscopic vision of works in festival exhibitions elsewhere: the fragmented architecture of Coleman & Hogarth’s Staged, Iran do Espirito Santo’s gradated monochrome wall, the hunks of marble set to create Martin Creed’s new Scotsman Steps glide systematically across the screen.

Overtime the disjointed temporary contents of Shapes and Things begin to converse with their surroundings- revealing and highlighting the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the gallery space itself. Healy’s pulsating orb acts as an inadvertent parody of the bright redundant buoys hanging outside the window, whilst there is a previously overlooked awareness of how three white pillars abruptly defy the comfortable symmetry of the other six.  Other patterns, shapes and shades from the work play-off the heavy permanent wooden fixtures, coatings of dark mustard paint and the frosted floral glass panels.

When discussing the general response to the effect of the kaleidoscope, Gombrich notes that people ‘usually respond with delight, but after a few exclamations of ‘ah’ and ‘oh’ they put it aside and talk of other things.’ Healy and Holt’s Shapes and Things provokes a similar initial reaction, however, there is enough intriguing conflict and intelligent construct here to hold the viewers interest long after this original impression has passed.

Image credits:

Shapes and Things, Richard Healy and Gemma Holt, 2010

Installation view, Sierra Metro, Edinburgh

Images courtesy the artists and Sierra Metro

Photography: Chris Park 

My wish with my Edinburgh International Book Festival coverage was to provide an accurate picture of what it’s like to go to a festival and still have to get up the next day, and in some ways my (lack of) coverage has been quite accurate, because no one has seen me. I run from work to events, sloping in and then dashing off again to help out with work (day work) related projects or to catch one of the few shows I foolishly booked for at the Fringe. I wish that I could wander serene and bookish around Charlotte Square Gardens, notebook in hand,  looking all calm and interesting, but I am really never going to be like that. I will always that slightly mad person with the red hair bouncing from one event to the other, looking vaguely stressed out . If you spot me, come say hi. I am not as stressed as I look, promise.

Anyway, here’s the first part of my blast through Charlotte Square this past week, to give you an idea of what it has been like.

OPENING WEEKEND

On Saturday morning the Edinburgh International Book Festival opened its doors for the 21^st time. By now a truly grown up festival, it has been given new youth by its latest director, Nick Barley, who took up the reigns in October of last year, and has since been making some radical changes to regular book festival fare.

The first day, however, was classic Book Festival. The Soweto Gospel Choir were singing just inside the entrance to the gardens and the weather was glorious. There were old faces and lots of new ones, and that lovely book festival buzz was definitely doing the rounds.

First up was Garth Nix, Australian author of Lirael, Sabriel and Abhorsen. He put on a great show, and told a lot of stories about his life (most of which turned out to be lies), to teach the kids in the audience that anyone can tell a good story – or a good lie – with the right tools.

It was interesting to go from an event where stories were described as lies to the Philip Pullman event. Pullman was attending the Book Festival to discuss his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The book is divisively published as part of Canongate’s Myth series, which sees well known authors reimagining famous myths.

The Good Man Jesus certainly has Pullman written all over it, and smacks of His Dark Materials, both in tone and ideological bias.

The event featured Philip Pullman in conversation with former Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries, and rock star theologian Richard Holloway. Richard Holloway spoke about faith and the problems of the church at the closing event of last year’s festival, and did so with such intelligence and compassion that it seemed only natural that he would chair this event.

For a discussion that could have so easily disintegrated into argument, Holloway handled the event admirably, instead posing questions that allowed Harries and Pullman to find common ground and expand upon their views for the audience’s benefit.

All three started off in agreement that the figure of Jesus likely existed, but whether this figure was divinely sent is another matter entirely. CS Lewis famously said that Jesus could only be one of two things, God or mad, but Pullman sees this is a foolish dichotomy, and one that can only divide people. Holloway asked: Is it possible to have a non-divine Jesus that is still morally relevant, or are the human and the divine interminably bound together? This is the question that Pullman has tried to answer in The Good Man, providing a moral and human alternative to the traditional gospels of the New Testament.

What I found interesting was Pullman’s openness to discussion and debate, despite the strong moral thwack of his novels. Last year at the festival, we saw Richard Dawkins speak out about the foolishness of religion. Pullman was the opposite. Though he remains opposed to the structures of institutional religion and is sceptical of miracles, Pullman believes that, at the end of the day ‘religion is about the experience’ and so anything that encourages this cannot be a bad thing. To Harries, he said:  ‘If my book makes people so cross that they go and read the New Testament, no one could be happier than me.’

All three men come from very different backgrounds, but agreed that the experience of religion is, at the core of it, one’s own, and that very little can or should be done by the church to mediate it. Though part of me wanted to see Harries and Pullman go at it Vatican-style, the end result was much more informative.

Image: Richard Wright’s Stairwell Project at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh

Richard Wright came to popular prominence last year when he won the Turner Prize for his large gold-leafed fresco, painted directly onto one of the interior walls of the Tate and praised by the judges for its ‘profound originality and beauty’. In recent years Wright’s work has focussed on the repetition of small details, hand-painted directly onto the walls of the spaces he is exhibiting in. The works, made in situ, are influenced and inspired by the space itself. They were described by one critic as ‘invisible art’ due to their hidden positions, for example on the ceiling or, in the case of one work in 2006 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, a high set window which he detailed with ripples of gold leaf.

Importantly his works are destroyed when the exhibition finishes, usually with a lick of white paint in preparation for the exhibition that follows; something which imbues the work with a sense of impermanence. Alongside the abandonment of the canvas these two factors work to challenge and diminish the gap between spectator and artwork.

For Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 Wright was commissioned to create a piece in the west stairwell of the Dean Gallery. Central Station caught up with the artist, after his In Conversation event last Friday, to talk about the project, his close connection to music and his enduring attraction to Glasgow.

You have said that one of the highlights of winning the Turner prize was the response and connection you had with the audience. It must be nice to chat to the public about your work in situations like this?

Yes, I mean, sometimes you have something to say and sometimes not. Sometimes it seems that there are too many conflicts to want to explain things, other times it comes easier. But of course it’s an opportunity for the work to be seen from a different point of view. Ordinarily people come and they only see the work, so for them to also see the human side of it… but hopefully I will also get something from them.

The stairwell project in particular is interesting because it is a permanent piece and won’t immediately be removed when the exhibition ends. Does that distinguish it from your other works for you?

Yes, I think that the fact that I knew the work may have a longer duration did affect the way that I thought about it. I was aware that I actually might have to look at it again, for a start, and that I actually might have to look at it again in a few years time. So my thinking about it was more prolonged, in the sense that I wanted the work to reflect a longer duration of thought than something I would just do and disappear. More than a month’s passed since I made the work, ordinarily it would be painted out now, and had it been that situation I may have done a different work.

In the talk you mentioned that for a piece you made for the Manifesta 2 show in Luxembourg, you took something from the space (in that case it was the runs in the concrete) that acted as a ‘way in’ for the piece. Did you find something similar for the stairwell project?

Yes, there was the symmetry of the architecture, the solidity of the architecture [and] elements which are in the rose of the ceiling, what appear to be honeysuckle leaves. And although I didn’t want to copy that, it was one way into the work. Also, the work of course is so made in the space, that the space makes the work. Whilst I may have started off with certain intentions, inevitably those intentions are deflected by the act of making it. So as you proceed along the wall, working in one way, you hit the obstacle of a piece of cornicing, or a corner, or change in direction of the physical surface which always speaks to the work, it changes the work. The work very much comes out of that process.

One thing I find fascinating is this connection to music and rhythm you can see in your paintings. Do you see this influence in all your work?

I think so, but I think that’s probably a question which is difficult for me to answer. As I said at one point earlier on, you think you’re doing something different and it turns out that it’s actually like something else that you’ve done [before]. And I think in terms of looking at things, art has been something I’ve been interested in since I was very young indeed, but music has had an enormous emotional impact on me. Music drives me in some ways and so the two things are very close together for me. Quite often some works will refer very directly to music or they might directly refer to what I call a poetic content of music. So that’s there.

I think it’s connected to the body as well – this act of making music and listening to music. When you look at things there’s this possibility to see them as being separate from you and when you listen to them they’re in you. That’s to do with the body, that’s to do with a more total experience and I think it is that experience I’m looking for with painting. It’s not that I want [the paintings] to overwhelm but I want them to become part of you or me in the way music does.

And the sense of space is so intrinsic to that…

Yes, definitely. But it is this perceived space, the work happens not there [on the wall], not here [where the spectator is], but somewhere in between.

You’ve stayed in Glasgow when many other artists have moved away. You were here during the nineties, a very exciting time for visual art and you’ve witnessed that scene change since. Do you still feel it’s a city that can offer you what you need from a city?

I still live there! Yes, I love Glasgow. Of course one’s drawn away, many times to different places but I always seem to come back. It used to be, back a long time ago, a city you moved away from if you wanted to be an artist. I see even now, and though the energy may have changed, it’s still a city that a lot of people want to move to, to become an artist. I am always surprised to discover that there’s something else going on there that I didn’t know about. I keep meeting young artists who are doing things and I think it’s great – it’s a good city. I was just in London for a week and I think I could never live or work there. There’s too much anxiety and I don’t mean that in terms of the pressure of getting on the tube – all that stuff is difficult and expensive. In particular in the cultural or art area, everyone’s so desperate, everyone wants to succeed, I guess because they need to, because of the pressure. I don’t have that same feeling, I think people are much more concentrated on the work that they’re doing in a place like Glasgow.

Edinburgh Art Festival continues until the 5 September 2010.