Louise Bourgeois @ Fruitmarket, until 23 Feb

220 framed paper-works hang side by side on the ground floor of the Fruitmarket. This intense collection from Louise Bourgeois’ Insomnia Drawings forms a linear insight into a stream of uncensored thought. Created during an eight-month period of insomnia, pattern, shape and dashed notes or music are captured on paper in an almost desperate act of distraction, the need to rid herself of that preventing sleep.

Curated chronologically by Frances Morris, we are able to trace the work in the order it was made. In some sections a sequence seems to appear: the evidence of a resolving thought process. Elsewhere, drawings stand alone. Biro, ink, pencil, felt tip and crayon doodle across a variety of paper, connected by the meandering path of Bourgeois’ consciousness. A collection of writings accompany the paper-works. Intimate lists of anxieties, desires, disappointments and mental states scrawled across pages in both French and English. A perfect example of the important relationship between drawing and writing that is common in much of Bourgeois’ work.

This relationship continues in the gallery upstairs, yet here the scale changes dramatically. Still on paper, these giant drawn and printed pieces luxuriate in the open space, yet a feeling of intimacy remains. Hints of bodily inspirations appear; cells, intestines and the female figure loom over the viewer aside personal hand written declarations. These pencilled texts, some rubbed out and reworked, include the phrase ‘I give everything away,’ from which the exhibition gets its name. This incredible collection of paper-work provides a personal insight into the thought process of Louise Bourgeois, arguably one of the most important artists of our time. The unabashed intimacy with which she records the details of her life absorbs us, affecting our own. [Cathy O'Brien]