Own Art: RSA Annual 2014

Working under the title of Focus on Film, the Academicians of the RSA are joined this year by invited artists working with a broad range of moving image for the curated element of this year’s Annual – from infectiously energetic music videos by Douglas Hart and Rachel MacLean to meandering ambient work by Dalziel + Scullion and cinematic narrative shorts. Ronald Forbes, convenor of Focus on Film refers to his programme as "a pot-pourri of engaging creative activity” accessible for a general audience, rather than an academic thesis on the state of film in contemporary Scotland.

The Sculpture court comes into its own as a preamble to the curatorial bent of this year’s offerings: the show flares into action at the top of those showy stairs with Sam Spreckley's Time – a beautifully-wilful act of creative destruction in which a series of dandelion clocks are ignited by the rhythmic spark of disposable lighter – setting an appropriately metronomic tone for the consideration of time-based media. Continuing in the lower galleries, pick ‘n’ mix presentations of nine curated playbills cacophonously vie for audience attention from taster-sized flatscreens. The main course is presented in a specially installed cinema space presenting the same rolling programme but with space for the work to breathe and for the viewer to immerse themselves in the hypnotic intricacies of Katy Dove's blissed-out kaleidoscopic animated drawings or to cosy-in and get a good look at Michael Fassbender's lovely craggy face up close in high definition (thank you John Maclean).

As ever in the main body of the Annual, top-quality painting and printmaking from Scotland’s most esteemed practitioners abound (from the delicacy of Elizabeth Blackadder’s genteel tableaux to the anxious figuration of Ian McCulloch’s vibrant, throbbing, mega-canvases). There are works available through the Own Art scheme which could comfortably adorn vast mansion or pokey flat alike.

The architecture display continues the big/small dialogue with projects including Kengo Kuma and associates’ plans for Dundee’s new V&A alongside beautifully-succinct domestic projects such as Konishi Gaffney architects’ laser cut model for the redevelopment of a Regency dormer.

Back downstairs, a deeply moving montage by Murray Grigor resonates with how far the acceptance of progressive architecture in Scotland has come. Revisiting the rubble-strewn shell of St. Peter's Seminary, Cardross (for which 1980s west coast Scotland just wasn't ready) after twenty-odd years, Grigor painstakingly recreates this double portrait of the now derelict modernist architecture masterpiece.

In sculpture Edward Summerton – also represented in Focus on Film – looks at the supernatural side of the natural world, never failing to delight and disturb in equal measure. His rural shenanigans seemingly result in lopped and stymied appendages and accessories served up with a good dash of his unique humour. A faux-designer handbag filled with bird shit (unfortunately minus tethered owl) and a gently-revolving leather glove flips us the bird…or a peace sign dependent on your perspective.

The collective unconscious of the RSA members would generate a Pinterest board infused with Spring fever – birds and eggs are everywhere suggesting an age-old preoccupation. The answer to which came first with regards to film may be presented by Eadweard Muybridge’s seminal movement studies (or zoopraxographs of birds, beasts and naked cricket players), which have been lifted out of the RSA’s collection to sit neatly alongside a presentation of prize winners of the RSA’s Morton award for lens-based work. In Philip Braham’s Falling Shadows In Arcadia, nature stands sentry as haunting traces of ghostly bodies are invoked in notorious dogging sites across Scotland. Roger + Reid keep it dark and entertaining in their masked-romp around a grand country house.

A number of the artists featured in Focus on Film work in an interdisciplinary mode and we see the fruits of their forays into film alongside a smattering of their works in other media. With such a packed exhibition, the film programme is generously light on longer-form films with the vast majority under ten minutes long. Little gems by Stephen Sutcliffe, Rose Hendry and Anna Pearson are bite-sized treats which sit well alongside slightly longer-form work such as Henry Coombes’ The Bedfords with its rutting be-antlered landed gentry occupying slightly more of our time. A wee trip to the pictures with the RSA provides the perfect context to absorb the both the big and the small in our own time.