Bright new work by eight Spanish talents is on display in Artelibre at Axolotl Gallery on Dundas Street throughout October.
New vehicles, animals and graffiti form a particular iconography for Ana Segurianes, whilst Leonardo (right) struggles to capture fleeting moments in various European capitals.
Elena Perez describes herself as 'a realism painter from Madrid' (see below right), whilst Jose Enrique Gonzalez is more forthcoming but no more enlightening, claiming to show us 'a way of encompassing time and achieving a greater depth in communion with ideas and shapes'.[img_assist|nid=2211|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=199|height=200]
Astrid Garrobo focuses on eyes as the windows to the soul, whilst Celso Dourado examines and inevitably lives the absence of his own hands.
Jeronimo esta en ingles looks back to his rural childhood, whilst Chilean Oscar is part of the New Spanish Realism.
Garcia Sevila is a little unusual in this company, his work being abstract and examining a world beyond vision.
I will concede that many of these works, at least in preview, are not to my taste. However, if they improve on better acquaintance I'll tell you how and why.
*****[img_assist|nid=2222|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=191|height=200]
New work by Brian Reid (right) will show in a solo exhibition (The Dark of Heartness) at Superclub on Gayfield Street from 9–20 October. We'll bring you more on this as and when we have it.
*****
Memories, Sleep and Dreams runs at Northumberland Street's Gallery on the Corner until 29 October, as part of Mental Health Arts and Cinema Week. The show will feature work by favourites such as Lee Ritchie, Anna Reid, Alison Prosser, Michelle Gates, Lynda Frame, Robert Euman and Fee Dickson. See also our coverage of events at the Stafford Centre on Broughton Street in Issue 199.
*****
[img_assist|nid=2216|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=104|height=200]The Printmakers Gallery on Union Street is hosting an exhibition which, paradoxically, combines visual self-confidence with a wistful sense of the artform's growing obsolesence.
The Writing on the Wall features work by Art & Language, Jeremy Deller, Ruth Ewan, Toma O'Sullivan, Joanne Tatham and Alistair Gray (right). Unashamedly radical and politically engaged, the exhibition seeks to build on a tradition of 'polemical, iconocalstic and satirical' printmaking. However, at the same time it acknowledges an inimicable cultural climate for such ideas, and the displacing influence of new digital media in the spreading of ideas.
'Edinburgh Printmakers has commissioned and published new prints by Art & Language, Jeremy Deller, Ruth Ewan, Alistair Gray and Tom O’Sullivan and Joanne Tatham. Their works will be presented alongside prints produced by Christopher Logue and by King Mob in the late 1960s, James Gillray in the late seventeenth century; pamphlets produced by political presses in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century and other political ephemera and banners.'
A free catalogue accompanies the exhibition, which runs until 29 October. Curator Rob Tufnell's context-setting essay can be read by clicking on the pdf at the very foot of this page.
*****
Union Gallery on Broughton Street are seasonally themed this month with a group exhibition whose title suggests that not everyone is equally thrilled at the return of cooler weather – Onslaught of Autumn.
From 13 October, five contemporary artists will be featured. Melanie Williamson is new to the gallery, but Hazel Cashmore ('Dark Sky', below), Ian Rawnsley ('Breaking on the eastern shore', below below) and Mark Edward 's landscapes and seascapes will be familiar to Union regulars.
[img_assist|nid=2213|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=200|height=149]
[img_assist|nid=2214|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=199|height=200]
Beth Robertson Fiddes also returns, wreathed in glory following a second placing in the Jolomo Awards. Her sumptous 'Luskentyre' is shown below. A review will follow in due course.
[img_assist|nid=2215|title=|desc=|link=node|align=middle|width=640|height=426]