‘PAPERWORK 3’ AT THE EDINBURGH SKI CLUB
The small scale and intimate surroundings of this airy Howe Street basement perfectly suit the return of three Working Lines Collective artists to the Fringe.
All have exhibited here in previous summer exhibitions, and one re-encounters their work with a sense of familiarity, affection and interest in how their style has developed over the intervening months. Described here are a few personal favourites from a total of 43 new works.
Ruth Thomas remains fascinated by the tidal extremes of the Scottish and Australian coasts. ‘After the Flood’ is a pleasurably colourful rockpool study, a celebration (and one imagines reworking) of the arrangement of stone, sand and weed, and the apparent caligraphy of their ‘design’.
More abstract, resembling vortices and traces of deposition, is ‘On the Tide’.
Unresolved, unfathomable, ambiguous, depicted without any contextual scale, ‘Sea Creature’ is both beautiful and slightly unsettling.
Marion Barron’s work has a pleasing serenity about it.
Her work begins with buildings, but soon develops into a painterly process of its own, a focus on the interplay of forms.
Her unfussy interpretation of detail, her interest in negative space – as in ‘Deepen’ below – makes this reviewer feel calm and contemplative.
I particularly enjoy the way her two-dimensional studies of shape occasionally produce disconcerting illusions of three-dimensionality, as in ‘Untitled 2’ and ‘Looking Through’ below.
Trevor Davies’ fascinations and approaches remain as eclectic as ever.
‘Each piece is a fresh adventure,’ he writes. ‘The results can be quiet or noisy, fast or slow, penny plain or multi-coloured.’
I was drawn to the quiet ones, for example ‘Green Plate’ with its sense of a thought in process, its rough texture, its careful relationship between square and circle.
I don’t understand ‘Spirals’, but I enjoy its evocation of prehistoric rock carving, the intricate fragility of bird skulls, and the surprising intrusion of a length of wire.
‘Agrigento’ is a city in southern Sicily, and in his collage of that name Davies responds to elements of its ancient ruins. There is a suggestion of archaeology about the grid pattern, and also of ‘Vitruvian Man’, a suggestive tension between the perfect symmetry of a carved bust and the eroding fabric of the temple columns.
This is an exhibition to make you think, in a venue that gives you space, time and quiet to do the thinking in. I thoroughly enjoyed it.—AM
Paperwork 3 continues at the Edinburgh Ski Club, 2 Howe Street (Venue 208), 11am–6pm until 29 August. Admission free.