Alicia Bruce, ''The Black Path'', Photograph, C-Type Print, 2012. Courtesy: Courtesy of the artist, © Alicia Bruce. From Series: 'Menie: Please don't pretend to care about my country's scenery in order to make yourself even richer' [enlarge]

Alicia Bruce, ''The Black Path'', Photograph, C-Type Print, 2012. Courtesy: Courtesy of the artist, © Alicia Bruce. From Series: 'Menie: Please don't pretend to care about my country's scenery in order to make yourself even richer'

REVIEW

Self-Reliance (1841)

Out of the Blue, Edinburgh
2 - 30 August 2012

Reviewed by: Alex Hetherington »

In Self-Reliance (1841) three Edinburgh-based visual artists have set up a provisional, in-progress space surrounding themes of political and cultural identity, self-awareness and self-sufficiency. This extends from the political documentary photography of lens-based artist Alicia Bruce, her assignment a disturbing account on the conversion through an uneasy artificial landscaping of a large part of Aberdeenshire coastline from nature reserve to American citizen tycoon golf club playground; to Malcy Duff’s self-published comic books on quest and repair set haphazardly on an overly long hanging sculpture; to Johnny Gailey’s restructured, rewritten, and republished Ralph Waldo Emerson text on self and social responsibility, alongside his mdf and wood photography pavilion of shipwrecked souls, lost and found. And to their utilitarian approach to funding this project, entirely by online crowd-funding resources. The new stream of creative and cultural philanthropy, a platform for donation, inclusion, generosity and incentive.

 

The key to this group show though is its analysis of the unsustainable, the reliant, its discordant take on notions of independence: Bruce photograph’s underscore the impossibility of sustaining a golf course ‘naturally’ and speak of the suspect business transactions behind these artificial vistas, Duff’s delicate, eccentric and surreal drawings of a solitary task sits on the verge of balance and collapse, looking for things to go wrong and Gailey’s temporary space, text and slide show observe obsolete technologies, outdated language forms, monuments to fallibility.

 

It is about collective opportunity, assembling individual practices, and reinforcing them round cooperative endeavour, financing and contribution. It is a show about the impulse for togetherness.

Writer detail:

Visual artist and writer based in Scotland and the USA.

alexhetherington.tumblr.com

Venue detail:
Out of the Blue »
36 Dalmeny Street, Edinburgh EH6 8RG

www.outoftheblue.org.uk/ Open in new window

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