Totems of Today

After hosting artists from Ironbbratz studios for its first few shows, Studio 41 sets out to re-invigorate Glasgow’s curating scene. Will Nothing Be Understood By the Totems of Today? unites photographers Hallgerdur Hallgrimsdottir and Fabien Marques and curator Magdalen Chua to present a small but focused look at themes of ritual, tradition, and the sacred and profane.

The show’s title references Tacita Dean writing about J. G. Ballard’s dystopian vision of a future “when everything will be out of context; when our descendants will read votive meaning into our sports stadiums and race courses.” The quote seems particularly pertinent to Marques’ photographs of pilgrims at the Lourdes grotto, wherein the whole gamut of human life is captured in all its gaudy tee shirted glory. Like an L. S. Lowry street scene in reverse, the almost holy beauty of the basilica redeems the eyesore of the masses.

Marques isn’t passing judgement on his subjects, though – the show is more expansive than that. Hallgrimsdottir’s Island mixes her own images with found ones, considering our relationship to incidents and natural phenomena through the presentation of the image itself. Juxtaposing high-end production with photocopies and grainy images is nothing new, but in this case it provokes questions about our relationship to the subject, distancing us from one, then drawing us closer to the next.

But what marks the show out is the care that has gone into its accompanying leaflet. A contemporary fable by Chua draws upon the giant blue sequins in one of Marques’ works in a story of a town mouse and a city mouse. Saccharine sweet, yes, but to encounter art writing that is neither oblique nor wilfully obscure, which actually adds considerably to the art – well, it makes an awful nice change.