Where Do I End and You Begin: The Art of Nations

More than twenty artists and seven curators from different corners of the Commonwealth present the 'common wealth' of Where Do I End And You Begin as an iconic history but also a reflective and personal interpretation. The result? Moments of brilliance, as seen in Berliner Antonia Hirsch's colourful depiction of the tulip during the Dutch Golden Age, coexisting within a sporadically overwhelming environment.

Video installations feature heavily throughout WDIEAYB, with Canadian artist Pascal Grandmaison's Soleil Diffèrè revisiting the islands from Montreal's Expo 67 World Fair. Shooting from neglected areas, Grandmaison captures a renewed yet bleak vision of landscape and autumnal structures. Not quite matching Grandmaison's vogue, Uriel Orlow's mass of multi-medias are hard to concentrate on given the complexity of layout. This criticism is only applicable in context of WDIEAYB – perhaps as a solo exhibition the Kingdom of Benin can be paid due attention.

Auckland artist Steve Carr's Burn Out shows a beat up car on 16mm film speeding towards the camera before 'burning rubber' and slamming itself into submission. It is another riveting motion picture but arguably just outside the communal concept. In contrast, Shannon Te Ao's videos, which focus on the Maori tribe's struggle, contain a morally apt premise.

As is inevitable in a show of this breadth, some works strike an off note. Yvonne Todd's series of socio-documentary photographs seem overtly personal to the artist which can be oddly off-putting. Conforming to that ideal, Derek Sullivan's Parisian-style Kiosk blends into the Art Centre's entrance in a wholly uninspiring manner.

There are historical associations however that hit the mantra running. For instance, Mary Sibande's double entendre I'm a Lady features model-cum-muse Sophie, who is traditionally clad and contemporarily coloured in a bold portrait. The opposing feature, a tentacled purple sculpture, shows The Allegory of Growth fitting to generations of colonised African women. Within the pretext of portraying the forgotten, Mary Evans' Transplanted is a frieze of empty gold frames and portraiture silhouettes which resembles an old European regality while outlining ethnic souls lost within infiltrated lands.

New Delhi artist Masoom Sayed creates a modern diction between the resolutely architectural and drunkenly modern. Her five model structures are cut outs from alcohol packaging and print media, and show thumb-size figures of servants and masters. It's a reminder of the racist hierarchy which wrought Britannia's Commonwealth. Yet Sayed's precision in creating skylines and stages illustrate the perspective that people of all creeds will someday be judged from the same place.

From the tiny to tent-like, Flaghall by UK-based artists Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman is a focal point of the show. Covered in patchwork and showing fictional countries and flags, this is a clear reference to the invasion and recreation of imperially ruled countries. Yet inside the cosy wee place, visitors are invited to watch a documentation of Scottish landownership via a video lecture by the writer Andy Wightman. Flaghall is the most timely piece on show and a tastefully informative contribution.

The fourth floor of City Art Centre gives way to the mesmerising reconstruction of a 1950s South African living room from Johannesburg artist Kay Hassan. The walk-through installation combines apartheid and oppression of black music – featuring a vinyl collection any musician would bow down to. Through this, Hassan creates the most visually stimulating and romantic addition.

WDIEAYB is an adventurously complex entity. The vastness of the project occasionally lacks lustre, however, as a common wealth show featuring an astonishing collective of artists it effectively displays the magnitude of challenges existing within anybody's interpretation of the Commonwealth.