Keep Calm and Carry On

This exhibition, featuring students from Edinburgh College of Art, never skips a beat, from Ross Christie’s amply stocked zine hut to Liam Crichton’s creepy Robo-Skeletor-kilt-wearing mannequin. Similar to many a degree show, the work is presented as factional, and not curated as such, and the opening event is crawling with buzzing folk. Adam Kennedy has a slogan placed upright on the musty floor towards the back of the cave. The words are written large in flimsy plastic and highlighted with pastel strip lights – a touch e-Flavin. Kennedy’s ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’ offers the show its title and its lynch-pin. Looking like a Hollywood sign for the bunker generation, the words could easily be a place name of the future derived from a long forgotten self-help mantra. The boudoir-toned text intonates lovingly - not that everything will be ok, but something similar and more believable.

Although the work in the space is compartmentalised, the pieces compensate for the darkness and often create the lighting themselves. The perky auras that surround the works act as ushers around the space. Amongst the derelict backdrop of heaving cracks and crumbling plaster, the effect is super strong. Rachel MacLean’s video illuminates the gloom. Her band of kinky baby doll-chimeras, faces painted with Scottish flags spliced with Rococco gilt, pump humour with menace into our reactionary world. The cave has a bunker mentality I like – a motif for creative doings, hidden away here and there or in art school until the time is right to take to the streets.