New Work Scotland 09: Michael White, Anna Tanner & Jennifer Grant

First out of the trap for the tenth instalment of New Work Scotland are three artists: Michael White and Anna Tanner inside the gallery, and Jennifer Grant with an offsite installation down Craig’s Close across the road. Grant’s stacked glass and ceramic ornaments, glued together and suspended above the path of a dank Edinburgh wynd is the standout work of this round of exhibiting, lending a touch of magic and a wee surprise to a public thoroughfare, an intervention to subtly improve the daily grind.

From the street outside the gallery, we are confronted by White’s giant, brightly coloured, rough hewn sculptures. They initially seem merely poorly made, yet gain a new sense of purpose when re-appraised after a brief reading of the accompanying publication. Is this necessarily a good thing, to have work that only functions when contextualised by an accompanying text? Well, in the context of New Work Scotland, with its specially commissioned essays from emerging art writers and its emphasis on demonstrating the levels of collaboration necessary to create successful artwork outwith the college environment, yes it is.

Even the text could not engage this particular viewer with the work of Anna Tanner, unfortunately. Freeform writing to accompany allusive painting leads, in this case, to bafflement. On a more positive note, the Guest Room’s takeover by Glasgow-based curating team PLACE Projects (not to be confused with the Edinburgh-based curating team, The Place Project) looks set to create a fertile ground for discussion and invention, as they marry up two pairs of recent graduates and get them to work collaboratively and then exhibit. First to experiment with the process are Rachel MacLean & Simon Gowing. The completed outcomes are not yet on show at the time of writing, but we await them with bated breath. [Rosamund West]