Alex Hartley

Alex Hartley's solo show is a mixture of photography and installation over the two floors of Market Street's Fruitmarket Gallery - although some of the photography has small constructions imposed upon the surface of the prints. Does this render it installation? Sculpture? Drawing? Something to ponder, but perhaps we should just dispense with definition by genre in these troubled modern times. He's got a show of art. It's good. But it might make you think. If that's a problem, don't go.

Much of Hartley's work deals with "buildering," which involves climbing and traversing buildings. Not as an expert climber, you understand, more as a way of connecting with the structure itself, re-experiencing the physical space, communing with architecture if you will. Hartley admits in the accompanying interview that there is an underlying sexual element. I was quite glad he admitted that, as I was slightly concerned that my reading of these works as quite sexual and voyeuristic reflected more on me than it did on the pieces themselves. I digress. There is an element of trespass inherent in much of the artist's work both past and present. His book "LA climbs: Alternative Uses for Architecture" features images of famous LA architecture, including the Hollywood sign, with suggested routes across the facades drawn on top. Most of the buildings are privately owned, and Hartley's desire to create work with them apparently derived from his frustration at being unable to enter their grounds after reading about them in a guide to LA architecture.

In this show he has included a series of photographs taken from the perspective of the trespasser. Or, given the location, the paparazzo. Or, given the nature of the images, the peeping tom. They are all shot from odd angles - through foliage, from a rooftop. Only tiny areas of the houses can be seen - corners, a bit of roof, a wall. These pieces reminded me of the notion of the erotic in the concealed - the Victorian obsession with sexy ankles because they were always covered, for example. These tiny bits of building, forbidden, but still captured, possessed, could be seen as the trophies of the architectural pervert.

Here the viewer observes the trophies of the voyeur without themselves becoming complicit in the act. However, in other works Hartley draws in the viewer, beguiles us with the desire to enter the forbidden space. His installation, Case Study, shown upstairs, presents a faux interior glimpsed through smoked glass. A series of backlit photographs within a false-wall structure creates the illusion of a room, the perspective of which changes as you walk in front of the glass façade. Walking around the piece we are confronted by its forgery, which leaves us with a sense of disappointment, frustration that we cannot go inside. We can glimpse, through a smoked glass veil - but our urge to do anything but look is foiled.

Elsewhere, in a series of newly commissioned photographs involving the buildering of Scottish houses, the viewer is left feeling slightly sordid, as we catch the artist in the act of traverse. In Kilmuir Traverse he is seen clamped crab-like to the corner of a small stone home. He is embracing the structure, experiencing it in a physical, intimate way which makes us feel a little voyeuristic, intrusive for watching, for having caught him in the act as it were.

The show as a whole is quite fascinating, dealing with concepts of building, architecture, landscape, and our relation to all of the above. I may have rather played up the sexual aspects of the works, but it was the issue which struck me most, I know not why. There are more, visually quite stunning works which I have not managed to mention. The gist is go, go, go. And take the time to look at the accompanying literature. If you can't be bothered - be like that, we don't need you anyway.