A group show in a former underground car park, inflatable sculptures in a disused swimming pool, a gym-themed exhibition in a shop unit. Taking place in over 50 venues across the city, the sixth Glasgow International (GI) festival is a vast and varied art biennial. And while new director Sarah McCrory has stamped her personality and approach on the programme, GI still retains its strong sense of being of the city rather than a fleeting and disconnected intervention.
US artist Jordan Wolfson’s films inhabit the wood-panelled underbelly of the rarely used McLellan Galleries. Sputtering projectors pop up in unexpected places – at the end of a corridor, in cupboard-sized rooms and even the disused ladies toilets – while bigger spaces feature large-format digital projections. In one of these, a suspended screen shows a man’s hand holding a razor blade. Slowly, the blade descends towards a disembodied lobster claw, the surface of which acts as a canvas for a pornographic image of a naked young man. The hand moves in slo-mo, eventually cutting the blue elastic band holding the pincers together – a fruitless act of release for animal and human alike.
Wolfson’s art is ambiguous in its intent and darkly humourous; it can make you smile then cringe then look away. In another film, animated HIV viruses bounce through New York streets, a stripy-topped cartoon character disembowels himself, a leather-jacketed punk, played by Wolfson, wanders through a Paris park and writhes on the ground. Loudly soundtracked with music by Mazzy Star and Beyonce, Wolfson’s cocksure aesthetic takes on and overpowers its unconventional surroundings.
Upstairs, the McLellan’s grand gallery spaces are host to the work of Glasgow-based artist Charlotte Prodger. Spread across two rooms, TV monitors on brushed steel frames are raised to eye height and play YouTube videos featuring bull-terrier dogs, a pair of pumps hanging from a telephone wire, a small but deadly-looking pen knife being lovingly handled. At the same time, Prodger reads what sound like found texts from the internet – imagery and narrative reconfigured as a sculptural installation.
In the galleries’ other wing, we’re reminded of a less connected world; a time when the Xerox machine was a cutting-edge communication tool and Sao Paulo-based artist Hudinilson Jr, who died last August, was exploring its artistic use. Alongside his photocopier pieces, wall-mounted 3D works resemble mini Constructivist sculptures mixed with queer politics and messy domesticity. Magazine images of penises, and diaries full of photographs of barely-dressed young men, bring sexuality and desire to the fore. While much of this roughly-made art speaks of another, less technologically-advanced era, its themes of individual expression and social conformity are very here and now.
Farcically vindictive
The McLellan Galleries and its four artists (also featured is American painter Avery Singer) is a strong focal point for GI, but it isn’t the only one. At Tramway, Bedwyr Williams has driven one of those big coaches used for sightseeing trips and away football games into the main gallery space. The beam of its headlights cuts through the misty darkness and you can sit inside the coach and peer out at the artist’s wittily unsettling film about a Britain of the future.
Following a farcically vindictive revolution – town planners are bricked up in one-person conservatories and left to die; elected representatives are forced to dance as they are belittled and beaten – a new hierarchy of self-appointed elites has been established, crudely based on how much stuff you have. As the narrative gets evermore ludicrous and society’s new top dogs wobble in their impractically-laced shoes and layers of body-deforming clothes, the leap from where we are now to this grubby-faced, object-obsessed dystopia gets ever smaller.
Also at Tramway, a retrospective of American artist Michael Smith’s videos offers a more mundane dissection of life under capitalism. Drawing on over 30 years of work, it unspectacularly presents the limitations and inadequacies of the American Dream, as seen through the videos’ central character, Mike, played by Smith himself. Naively ambling through the years, often with misplaced enthusiasm and always with mediocre results, Smith’s character calmly and unknowingly questions the values that underpin western consumerism.
Year-round activity
GI has always been about much more than big-name showstoppers, and while this year’s programme fits a little more snugly into the international biennial mould than previous editions, orbiting the festival commissions are smaller shows that reflect more broadly the city’s year-round activity.
At David Dale Gallery in the city’s east end, Swiss artist Claudia Comte plays with form and structure to create a warmly compelling installation of woodcuts and wall murals. In a separate space, her film pairs footage of Norwegian fjords with a grid of mutating circle motifs and gently pulsating techno. Vancouver-based artist Gareth Moore, in residence at Glasgow Sculpture Studios for the first three months of this year, has bricked up the gallery’s main entrance, made a blocked arch from wood found in the nearby canal, and built a big walk-in box containing wood and metal ‘animals’.
One of GI’s smallest and most intimate shows is at 42 Carlton Place. It features a beautifully realised exhibition of Christina Ramberg’s sketches and paintings (just two), and is a slight and delightfully austere introduction to the Chicago artist, whose work has not been shown in the UK for over 30 years. A hidden gem of the festival, unexpected shows like this define the character and shape of Glasgow International as much as its post-internet art and ambitious commissions. It’s this combination that continues to make GI stand out in an increasingly crowded international biennial scene.
Glasgow International continues until 21 April. www.glasgowinternational.org
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