Be the Hammer or the Anvil @ Generator Projects

There’s an all new, all female, committee at Generator Projects, Dundee. Their first show, Be the Hammer or the Anvil, is a similarly all female affair that includes artists Rachel Adams, Solveig Einarsdottir, Mairi Lafferty, Rose Ruane and writer Catriona McAra. Going straight for the crown jewels, they tackle that former haven of male exclusivity, fetishism.

Edible, tactile and self-loathing, each of the exhibits expose a dank cellar of coveted obsessions. Not in the artists or curators themselves, but in us filthy perverts who watch on. Made complicit by the very act of our looking, we’re drawn into the fetishistic game. The question is, are we the sadistic conferrer of pain – the hammer – or the pitiful receiver of masochistic torture – the anvil?

With Ruane’s video, Godforsaken Hole (Red Study), we are, without a doubt, the intended subordinate in this unhealthy relationship. A close-up of a woman’s mouth projected onto the wall of the gallery mumbles solipsistic platitudes while lipstick is applied, first to the lips and gradually to the face, teeth and tongue. Long before the mouth is claggy with cosmetic filth, the self-obsessed performer has made of us the pathetic objects of her relentless attack. Disgusting.

Adams’ installation draws on a material obsession. With all the folds and furrows of a libidinal expanse, three black, paper sculptures of varying size – but equal menace – crouch in the gallery’s main space. Alongside are strips of hanging, coloured material, like fly-preventing door curtains. The installation has a gravitational weariness – a puritan’s reminder that we are essentially base and primitive.

Lafferty’s black and white video I Create as I Speak is a haunting depiction of a man being tattooed. The word ABRACADABRA is spelled out over and over on his arm in a triangle formation. Like an ancient film shot during an anthropological expedition, the body is ritually inscribed with the fetishistic parameters of desire. Her photos are less interesting – a homage to the unforgettable Francesca Woodman.

Einarsdottir has made a series of sculptures using sweets, including marshmallows and Pez. Configured into a wall drawing or systematically covering a stag’s head, the sickly objects are a reminder of the obsessions we coveted long before we encountered our onanistic competence. Perishable and ugly, they are glutinous remedies to a life without sex.

Materially and theoretically ambitious, Be the Hammer or the Anvil is a welcome return to concerns of the body in art. An attack on the overly-cerebral conceptualism of the previous generation, the work here is no less high-minded in its pursuits. Forming a collective hammer, these ladies are destined to expose the fallacy of our long-held beliefs. Despite our astonishing abilities as rational beings, we are all still just filthy, wretched wankers.