Richard Couzins: Free Speech Bubble

HICA (The Highland Institute for Contemporary Art) was set up last August by two artists in the front room of their converted sheep farm near Loch Ness. It is a unique and ambitious new space, with a challenging and critically rigorous programme, informed by the cultural and theoretical implications of its spectacular location. It attempts to resurrect and re-examine the critical framework of Concrete Art, suggesting that meaning can be derived in and from proximate and discrete contexts related to the work, the space and its location.

The current exhibition Free Speech Bubble by Richard Couzins attempts to digitally construct transitional spaces informed by this site. The first video piece is placed before a vast picture window and imagines, through the use of sound and image, the inner workings of the disused mill beyond. Merging the visual reality of location with the imagined din of the mill's inner workings, sight and sound become confused and isolated creating a work that attempts to sit in the ambiguous space between these two senses. 

Here, for once, nature edges out the magnetic pull of the moving image, an interesting development in itself. The isolated beauty of the landscape is far more captivating then the cartoon-like video image and Couzins' visual elements appear deliberately weak in order to achieve the intended outcome. In fact the image itself is in danger of being eclipsed by the beauty of a natural setting it does not quite succeed in harnessing.

Other elements of this tiny show sometimes appear intentionally confusing, suggesting a hint of pretension that occasionally leaves its audience out in the cold. I leave being far more impressed by the ambition of HICA than by this exhibition. It is a space which attempts to be artistically relevant in an area that is in much need of some challenging visual culture. Vital and exciting, the future of HICA looks bright.