AMY-
Mixing bowls belching out heaps of savoury snacks, a myriad of multi-coloured drinks; syrupy, cloying cavity catalysts, a fluffy pink mask sails past at eyesight- was that, is that my chum behind there? Speakers blare corny anthems, everyone is sporting little badges and enters through a silvery, fringed curtain straight into a rip-roaringly good old time. The evening was, perhaps some two sausage dog balloons and a clown short of bearing a true semblance of the most wonderful ever kid’s party. To interpose, that is, ahem, with an exceptionally mature, insightful offering of work from our collaborating artists.
Intentionally serving as welcome playback of erstwhile jolly misadventures- before council tax and c.vs and dole queues- the tone of the exhibition, in its entirety, was a little nostalgic for something now past; those heady days of party-harding which characterised Art School term time. Wearing rejection ever easier now, no longer licking our paws in maudlin self pity with each knock- back, each second sentence carried on the air seems to be suffixed with ‘I saw this residency online’ in somewhere or other. But one should not be deceived nor indeed disheartened by the necessity of ‘Jackmove’s unreserved jubilance to cure the onslaught of grown-up monotony now setting in. Professional opportunities have fallen into the worthy laps of many of Show Two’s exhibiting artists, pre-empting recognition and exorbitant success upon whom they have been bestowed. Slowly but, indisputably surely this year’s batch of fresh baked Glasgow art graduates are charting a clear route for themselves in the hinterland post Art School. Given a year, or perhaps less, it can be fully expected that they will emerge entirely from the undergrowth, rubbing their eyes, newly resplendent masters of their own practice.
Wary and not a little disquieted by the astronomical alcoholic percentage of Zamaretto we soon discovered that this was gloriously concealed by the most cheering of sugar-sweet flavours. The bar was arranged with bottles in colour gradation, from ambery peach and yellow-golden pear through to a windsory green apple and true blue raspberry, which was positively cerulean! The masses present were forced to individually ask themselves a question when confronted with bountifully free measures of this unfamiliar spirit. Their internal dialogue went something like this;
‘Am I Zam?’ glug of the beverage ‘Zam I am!’
Boy oh boy, Zam they certainly were, putting the stuff away like teens at a soda fountain and uncovering a vast quantity of mixer combinations in the process. Banana and coke, cherry and coke, pear and cloudy lemonade, original on the rocks and chocolate with milk à la white Russians all come highly recommended. Think something which looks like fruit syrup and tastes so innocuous must surely be a placebo? Think again.
