PLAGUES @ Transmission Gallery

The highly recommended art event of the weekend must surely be PLAGUES, a for-one-night-only performance of new work by artist Donald Urquhart, jointly commissioned by Glasgow’s Transmission Gallery and London’s Studio Voltaire. A so-called “live radio play”, the performance involves six actors, numerous costume changes, and utilises the traditional methods of radio sound effects (coconuts, gravel pits etc) in the pseudo-soundbooth of a screened-off onstage area. In the interval, Urquhart will screen an accompanying film work, L’Entr’acte, which purports to document the backstage goings on of the contributing actors. The three-act work will apparently be delivered in a camp comic style underpinned by Urquhart’s trademark notes of vitriolic black humour, the subject matter being various types of plagues ("of the mind, curses, infestations and invasions"). The night should tread many’s a line between genres, humours, and indeed branches of the performative arts, breaking down barriers and creating a melange that promises to entertain and provoke.