Emergent Artists: Christy Cole And Manu Kurewa

Of the hundreds of artists that step out of its doors each summer, Glasgow School of Art chooses to bring a couple back every now and again and showcase their progress thus far. In the third edition of the annual Emergent Artists programme, 2006 graduates Manu Kurewa (Painting & Printmaking) and Christy Cole (Masters in Fine Art) return to the fold in a small exhibition in Studio 42 just off the main gallery.

I was already familiar with Kurewa’s well-populated depictions of a seedy and tragicomic urban end of days, their red or blue night scenes seen from a privileged height, highlights of colour washing the streets in a pervasive murky glow. In this exhibition the perspective also drops to earth and across the thresholds of pubs and clubs. In particular House and If only… begin to get closer to a more menacing use of light and the suggestion of figurative form, moving away from the more caricatured figures of previous works.

The walls and windows of the Mackintosh studios are formidable opponents to sculptural installation and Cole has attempted to reconcile his veiled black and white structures with the awkwardly large space. In its failure to take the space on in scale, the fabric enveloped steel tubes, stands, partition walls and Perspex sheets seem all the more cowed, preserved from all but the most prying of eyes and hands. A glimmer of excitement is caused by a collage of facial parts but eventually fades to mild confusion.