NWS 2010: Nicolas Party and Catherine Payton

New Work Scotland’s winter outing looks to be an eccentric one. Nicolas Party, painter and graduate of The Glasgow School of Art’s MFA programme, is set to do some wall drawings of tea pots. Catherine Payton, recent graduate of Edinburg College of Art, is to write a script about her great uncle who is said to be reincarnated in the body of a Manchunian man living in Holland.

Party’s drawings are playful and, dare I suggest, ironic. That’s to say they knowingly parody the now unfashionable art form, still life, to amusing effect. Using charcoal he draws pots and sausages, paying particular attention to their conical form. Around the drawings he decorates the walls in fluorescent patterns that enhance the installation while openly distracting from the drawings. “I want to disturb the attention of the viewer,” he explains, “challenge the eye.”

Payton has written a script about her great uncle Charlie, a WW2 aeroplane navigator who was shot down in battle at the age of 21. A man has since claimed that he is the reincarnation of Charlie and Payton seems quite amused by the whole scenario, despite what this implies, that the man believes he shares the intimate memories of her great uncle. As well as the script Payton looks to show a video and a sound work.

So far this year’s NWS programme has been a varied and lighthearted affair, which seems to be a fairly accurate reflection of what’s going on in the Scottish art scene: basically loads of artists interested in the peripheries of society and culture, including outmoded art forms and deluded, superstitious characters. This proves that artists are, in the main, weirdos that like weird stuff. Do you? [Andrew Cattanach]