Alasdair Gray: Sphere of Influence II @ The Reid Gallery

As part of the Alasdair Gray season, Glasgow School of Art have mounted in their Reid gallery a small selection of works by Alasdair Gray, which is then literally surrounded by prints and drawings by ten other artists. In its objective the exhibition is simple enough – to encourage new readings of Alasdair Gray’s work.

To do so, the conditions are set up for juxtapositions with his artistic predecessors and contemporaries, as well as younger graduates of GSA, where Gray’s legacy is definitely, if subtly present.

At the very back of the exhibition, Stuart Murray’s Gateway to Work continues the beginnings of a trend for Glasgow artists making work about being on the dole – see also Michael White’s recent exhibition You’re Studying that Reality … We’ll Act Again. Murray’s work shares with Gray a stylisation of faces that makes the different characters seem at the same time very similar, yet with great subtlety Murray relays a sense of distinctive personalities.

There’s also a wry chiding of Gray’s screen print Corruption, bombastically gendering political iniquity as 'the Roman Whore... who sucks all semen back into her womb.' While Corruption faces out the window, out of sight of passers-by and in small writing around decisively rendered line drawings of strong shouldered and coolly staring nude females, Gray contemporary Dorothy Iannone states: 'It’s not necessary to seduce – self-respect is enough to inspire love isn’t it?'

So often seen, it is easy to overlook Gray’s work as straightforward on the basis of familiarity. This edition of Spheres of Influence (which continues in the Gallery of Modern Art) is effective in making manifest the specificities of Gray’s work, and setting in motion conversations about Gray that go beyond lazy fondness. [Adam Benmakhlouf]