Gregor Laird @ Q! Gallery

A key motif in the stylised landscapes of Gregor Laird’s Plastic Pastorals, the Edinburgh artist/designer/DJ’s offering to this year's Glasgay!, is that of mediation between apparently opposing forces. This motif is manifest in a variety of forms: in the mediation of our preconceptions and our sense of experience upon viewing Scottish landscapes; in the mediation of the inorganic materials and new media methods used in many of the pieces; and in the mediation of viewing this exhibition, which is to experience not a Scottish landscape but instead Gregor Lairds’ idea of a Scottish landscape.

His background as a designer is obvious – flat, neon, plastic, with recurrent stylised motifs that signify what we think of as ‘nature’ in frames, on canvas, and on the ceiling and window. The pieces range from clean and intricately cut out bi- or tri-colour plastic layered depictions of mountain-scapes (each piece based on a specific location), to more painterly mixed media pieces combining styles and approaches, drawing on map gradients, pencil drawing and digital images. Many of the pieces are overlayed with man-made elements like pylons, but somehow this use of urban motifs avoids the cliché-ridden moralising I feared. Laird’s opinion is not apparent; instead we are presented with an ambivalent juxtaposition of form and content, un/natural, in/authentic, in/organic. It seems the artist’s intention is to draw on these different subjects and styles with aesthetic, not political or ethical, intentions.

While setting out to transcend rather than satirise the high and low culture romanticisations of Scottish landscape, Laird has created his own romantic and wonder-filled aesthetic, one that takes concrete places as their inspiration but ultimately uses them in the service of a glimpse into the artist’s unique, colourful and ultimately beautiful language. Which is lucky because I am certainly more interested in this original insight than any faithful depiction of Scottish landscape. (Lucy Nicholas)