Against Anti-Intellectualism @ SWG3

On the exhibition’s poster is written its title in block capital letters in black tape.  Its visceral nature little correlates with what one imagines a pro-intellectualist might produce and instead denotes a furious radical in a bedsit. But as we all know, true radicals rarely associate themselves with the intellectual elite. They’re all about pragmatism on the streets, not books and ideas. So, why this seeming contradiction – and what’s with the polemical title?

Goodness only knows. The show’s steadfast title is where the polemics both begin and end. Inside is a polite arrangement of installations, paintings and video works by artists Calum Stirling and Andro Semeiko.

Calum Stirling’s tasteful installations are inspired by French interior design from the 1920s and include a kinetic sculpture of two concrete, social-realist arms that drag their knuckles across the floor in a circle, passing through a wooden panel that has been designed to kindly accommodate them.

Stirling’s video The Romans could have been made by a po-faced Vic and Bob. Two characters in janitor jackets and flat caps toss Renault car badges in a curious game invented by a particularly unrelenting Samuel Beckett.

Andro Semeiko’s paintings, on the contarary, are fun. In the main, they parody regal portraits of men in armour – only the sitters’ faces have been obfuscated with blobs of paint. They poke fun at the pomposity of portrait painting and the vanity of rulers under the feudal system.

So, it would seem those anti-intellectuals have a fight on their hands. A disparate group of the finest radical intellectuals drawn from the far corners of British comedy, Irish drama and iconoclastic republicanism are set to wage war on the thick-headed populists and authoritarians that form the ranks of anti-intellectualism. Beware! [Andrew Cattanach]