80s Icons, Human Donation, and a Hermit Genius: This Month in Scottish Art

This month's pick of Scottish contemporary art sees four exhibitions run through the month, across Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow

Feature by Adam Benmakhlouf | 01 Apr 2015

Opening and closing first, it's the new show from Generator in Dundee. Entitled What Remains, exhibiting artists Hans K Clausen and Kim K Wilson work directly with industrial and domestic by-products of human activity. Hans K Clausen engages with material consumption and urban discarding. Lost gloves and repurposed vending machines are just some of the work he generates from the detritus of the city. In Wilson's practice, it's the process of industry rather than its trash which takes her interest. Both natural and processed materials are subject to extraction, drying and incineration, compressing and reconstituting matter. The exhibition is open from 28 March until 19 April.

In Ingleby this month, and running until 23 May, things are getting a bit 'outsider' with an exhibition of the work of Francis Archibald Walter. Also known (to himself, at least) as the 7th Prince of the West Indies, Lord of Follies and the Ding-a-Ding Nook, Walter has been recognised as a prodigiously talented writer and artist. It was in the last 25 years of his life that he retreated into a hermitic lifestyle, in an isolated shack in the Carribean. There he created some 25,000 closely-typed pages of history, philosophy and autobiography, and hundred of his extraordinary paintings and carving. These included portraits both real and imagined, including Hitler playing cricket and Charles and Diana as Adam and Eve. There's also the incongruous appearance of Scottish landscapes. Walter developed an affection for the nation after he visited, and in his works returns imaginatively to this country frequently.

From paintings made in a remote cabin in the Carribean, it's up to Dundee and into the heart of 80s NY fashion and culture. DCA will present a selection of Maripol's photographs, garments and jewellery. And the work of this iconic photographer is also addressed by contemporary Glasgow-based artists Clare Stephenson and Zoe Williams. Installations by Stephenson and video, prints and objects by Williams respond to the glamour and sensuality of Maripol's influential output from the late 1970s right up to the present. It was especially in the 80s that Maripol became known for photographing and styling key cultural figures from Fiorucci to Marc Jacobs – and from Madonna to Grace Jones, via Basquiat, Warhol and Keith Haring. This influence has continued for 30 years, and will be discussed in an accompanying series of events, talks, workshops and screenings throughout the next few months as the show runs. We'll highlight these in the weekly events column on the website. Spring/Summer 2015 opens on 4 April and runs until 21 June.

From 3 April until 17 May the CCA present a collaborative research project by Christine Borland and Brody Condon. Unusual and difficult issues are raised in the entwined subject matter and materials of this project, which revolves around human body donation as a tool for artistic research and practice. At the end of last month, Condon and Borland set their project going with an open air firing of ceramic sculptures, which will be displayed alongside performance documentation, and legal paperwork presented in the CCA Galleries function as a proposal to potential body donors whom the artists have worked with over the past two years. Raw earth sourced from Scottish islands has been worked into clay using traditional Neolithic methods through combining the raw material with animal hair, sand and fat. Contemporary forensics is also included within their purview as they look to the process of hypostasis whereby traces of objects touched before death remain on the bodies of the deceased. This is incorporated within their proposal for the use of their donor bodies. A series of events will also include hypostasis ‘rehearsals’ during which the trace of the sculptures will be left on carefully positioned living bodies.