Scottish Art News: October 2015

It’s October, so the long-awaited Glasgow edition of the Turner Prize is here. Online, you’ll find our interview with Sarah Munro from September’s print edition if you’d like to prime yourself before visiting the blockbuster show in Tramway. With work from socially activist architecture collective ASSEMBLE, and some kind of re-presentation of Janice Kerbel’s otherwise one-off operatic work Doug, plus a study room by artist Bonnie Camplin there are definitely a few surprises in store for the Tramway. Turner Prize 2015 continues until 17 January 2016.

As part of the wider Turner Prize programme across Glasgow, GSA Exhibitions put on one of their highest production shows to date for the work of Grace Ndiritu. Special access was granted to allow for the filming of a performance within the partially-destroyed Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Building. With an interest in shamanistic practices, Ndiritu’s props and costumes are displayed alongside the filmwork. The show will continue until 12 December.

There’s always some excitement to the opening of a new show in 42 Carlton Place. Run by two Glasgow-based advance-stage career painters Merlin James and Carol Rhodes, the space occupies the front room of their house just over the Clyde on the Southside. Continuing their programme of infrequent but very thoughtful shows, Adrian Morris’s work is now on display until 25 October. For this show, they’ve taken an interest in a “lull in British art” that took place in the 1970s. A time during which Adrian Morris was foremost among 'the artists working most strongly [who] were often pursuing independent paths, not easily pick up on or promoted, critically or commercially.' Rhodes and James situate Morris within what they describe as 'a very particular mix of earlier twentieth century art, from Hélion to Mondrian, and Albers, but also de Staël, Morandi, even Lowry.' Works dating from the early 1960s until the late 90s will be on display.

On Thursday 8 October, LUX and Rhubaba will partner to provide a screening of Walk-Through by emerging London-based film and installation artist Redmond Entwistle. This work from 2012 explores the site, design and philosophy of the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in order to pose 'wider questions about contemporary pedagogical models and their relationship to new forms of social, political and economic exchange that have emerged since the 1970s.' The 18 minute video will be followed by a discussion, with the whole event starting from 8pm.

In Dundee, the work of Hideyuki Katsumata is on display in Dundee Contemporary Arts until 15 November. In his first UK show, Katsumata presents paintings, animations and prints that “depict robots, UFOs, dragons and strange bodies with multiple limbs.” Influence comes from manga and street art, with DCA Galleries being transformed “into a dazzling psychedelic landscape of cartoon strips writ large.” Some readers may be familiar with Katsumata’s collaborations with CUZ – a superduo comprising of Sam Dook from The Go! Team and Mike Watt from the Minutemen, fIREHOSE and The Stooges.

From 10 October in Edinburgh’s Ingleby Gallery, James Hugonin’s visually complicated paintings will be exhibited. For Binary Rhythm: Paintings 2010-2015, Hugonin displays these six years’ paintings which continue an organised aleatoric approach to abstract painting. These most recent paintings are the culmination of 30 years of this kind of painterly research into the potential of what the gallery describe as 'his now familiar language of tiny rectangular marks applied in their thousands, colour by colour, with a grid onto a gessoed ground.' In stunning detail, the most recent works are all in the exact same size and dimensions; having gestated over many months, they gradually emerge and become the almost-difficult-to-look at final works.

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