Pieces in the Times and the Sunday Herald both focus on artist Shahin Mem­ishi. Seek­ing asylum in Glas­gow, having been forced to flee his native Kosovo, Mem­ishi (an art teacher) had some­thing of a rev­e­la­tion on seeing work by the so-​called New Glas­gow Boys for the first time, and this show matches his por­traits of the artists he admires with exam­ples of their work.

I’m absolutely not having a go at the writ­ers of these pieces. The cura­to­r­ial con­ceit of show­ing a rel­a­tively unknown artist along­side the old guard who inspired him is intrigu­ing, the story of Mem­ishi find­ing suc­cour in their work is a good, moving one, and a show fea­tur­ing work by Steven Camp­bell, Ken Currie and Peter Howson is cer­tainly news­wor­thy. Also news­wor­thy is the fact that the works by these artists are from a pri­vate col­lec­tion, and are all for sale. Hmmn.

Anyway, here’s the thing: it’s an awful show. Awful. There’s some good stuff, sure, but none of it is by Mem­ishi, and the hang is far­ci­cal. Half the paint­ings are at wonky angles, a few are sat on the floor, and a decent set of Peter Howson draw­ings is placed so high on the wall that you’d need to stand on a chair to get a good look at them. One of Memishi’s paint­ings is set on an easel right in front of a Ken Currie, obscur­ing it com­pletely. The late Steven Campbell’s name is spelled ‘Stephen’, on the label beside his paint­ing and in the title of Memishi’s por­trait. Really. To me, that looks more like an insult to Currie and Camp­bell than a trib­ute. And so do Memishi’s paint­ings, how­ever well-​meant they may be. They don’t make you want to claw your eyes out in horror or any­thing, but they’re the sort of thing you see in those gallery-​cum-​shops that sell inof­fen­sive stuff by local artists along­side nov­elty tea-​towels and jew­ellry made by hob­by­ist house­wives. I’m amazed that his sub­jects, having seen his work, agreed to sit for him (Camp­bell didn’t, for obvi­ous rea­sons, but I’m told the rest did). And I nearly got the gig­gles when read­ing in the Times that Mem­ishi is, accord­ing to Ally Thomp­son, ‘one of a new breed of Euro­pean artists gal­vanis­ing the city’s art scene’. This is not the case.

So, the show doesn’t deserve the oxygen of pub­lic­ity - it should’ve been suf­fo­cated at birth! - but it drew more press than any exhi­bi­tion in Scot­land since the big Emin ret­ro­spec­tive and Campbell’s posthu­mous show­ing of new work.

My point, I sup­pose, is that it’s depress­ing that the visual arts only make the news pages when there’s a whiff of scan­dal, a record-​breaking auc­tion or, as in this case, a heart-​warming tale to be told. These things don’t have very much to do with art. My other point is that you shouldn’t waste your time vis­it­ing Art­De­Caf this month. Not for the art, anyway, though I feel duty bound to report that they make a pretty decent plate of scram­bled eggs.

Update: My review of the show was spiked, for rea­sons I prob­a­bly shouldn’t relate here, but you can read it on my Work weblog, if you like.

In Octo­ber, with your help, the gallery space will be turned into a free cafe and plat­form for shar­ing of food, ideas, seeds and pro­duce, run by artists and backed by the resources of com­mu­nity food ini­tia­tives, gar­den­ers and allot­ment communities.

Soup and bread is a uni­ver­sal dish, simple and sus­tain­ing; shar­ing in eating, a uni­ver­sal activ­ity. Made from locally sourced, fresh and sea­sonal veg­eta­bles, artists will cook soup (and more besides!) and bake bread in the gallery. The work­ing kitchen will be fully open to the dining facil­i­ties – cook­ing as a kind of performance.

See also: Rirkrit Tira­vanija.

A slightly off-​putting title for a show, maybe, but it fits. The three artists, Steven Ander­son, Dougie Mor­land and Javier Ferro don’t have much in common on the sur­face, but the more time you spend with their work, the more the links between the three become apparent.

The best stuff is by Dougie, I think - he has made a great big loom­ing wing thing based on a draw­ing by a psy­chi­atric patient, that has a really black front and a softly glow­ing back. The result is pretty dis­con­cert­ing, as if the wing is a shadow cast­ing its own shadow made of light. He’s done a couple of draw­ings too, of branks—tongue tor­ture devices used to silence and punish uppity women in the 17th Cen­tury—one of which looks like a Rorschach inkblot test with only one pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion. That all sounds a wee bit goth writ­ten out, but it’s really an attempt to draw together ideas around the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, psy­cho­analy­sis and super­sti­tion. Dis­claimer: I’ve known Dougie for yonks, but if I thought his work was bibble, I would def­i­nitely say so!

Steve Anderson’s work is right up my street, too. He’s a bit like an ethno­g­ra­pher, or an anthro­po­log­i­cal archae­ol­o­gist of the present, and looks at the social inter­ac­tions around an absent per­for­mance by col­lect­ing up broken bits and bobs—snapped guitar strings, busted drum­sticks—from the floors of rehearsal rooms, and pho­tograph­ing folk as they arrive at a gig. I missed his own per­for­mance on open­ing night, but it seems he’s work­ing on word­less folk songs made up of over­heard excla­ma­tions, which is pretty intriguing.

Javier Ferro is the weak link, really, but in this con­text his work stands up, espe­cially the con­crete table with an unfin­ished letter on it, read­ing, weirdly, “Dearest, I have to think about you every­where I am. I am there­fore writ­ing to you from my boss’ office whom I’m rep­re­sent­ing at the moment”.

So, yeah, good stuff: lots of fizzing little con­nec­tions between the work, which all touches on poten­tial futures, half-​remembered pasts and unde­fined rela­tion­ships. And, for once, this is a show about memory—the cur­rent de facto cura­to­r­ial jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for every sod­ding group exhi­bi­tion you see—that’s actu­ally about memory!

Update: My review of the show for The Herald.

Addi by Simon Peri­ton, 2006, blue mir­rored per­spex.

I’ve posted about Simon before: back in 2003 I inter­viewed him in advance of a show at Inver­leith House.

The cur­rent show is on until Feb­ru­ary 24th; my review will run in The Herald this Friday.

Neil­son, Youngs & Kneale on Vimeo

Heavy, eh?

Neil­son & Youngs were the high­light of a great Vol­canic Tongue night, which also fea­tured Kneale play­ing a weirdly rave-​ish set, and Opaque doing their ‘masked high­way­men of feed­back drone’ thing. The latter, excel­lent as usual, look dan­ger­ously like a super­group nowa­days—for­merly a two-​piece, mem­bers now include Nackt Insek­ten, Noma and front­per­son/Kovorox label-​founder Kylie Minoise (not their real names).

Also of note: inspired by a bloke in the crowd who stank like an old whore’s duvet, Guy, Len, Dave Clark and myself for­mu­lated a new enter­tain­ment con­cept, draw­ing on the immer­sive, often dis­tress­ing, qual­i­ties of noise, but lim­ited to olfac­tory sen­sa­tion. We call it nase.

I am still revis­ing this one act play which will be pro­duced at Oran Mor leisure centre, Glas­gow, in Octo­ber 2006, in the lunchtime Play, Pie and Pint series. This is how it stands on Monday 26th June this year. Anyone wish­ing to pro­duce or re-​print this after the Octo­ber pro­duc­tion is here given my per­mis­sion – Alas­dair Gray’s per­mis­sion – to do so with­out inform­ing me and with­out pay­ment, and I hereby also permit anyone to re-​write this play in a dialect or lan­guage they prefer, with any changes and addi­tions they like, if they give it a dif­fer­ent title and announce that their ver­sion is based upon my play.

If you’re having trou­ble with the video above, or are read­ing via RSS, try view­ing it on Vimeo.

For your infor­ma­tion: the enter­tain­ments begin at 8pm, and early on we’ve been play­ing lots of drone, noise, folk, prog, spoken word and eso­teric hoot­ing, largely for our own ben­e­fit, before moving on to skronk, punk, rock ‘n’ roll, dance­hall, dub­step, very gay disco and out­right pop­ulist selec­tions - my Addicted To Love covers medley must be heard to be believed! - once the pun­ters turn up. As if that wasn’t enough, you get first dibs on Optimo queue tick­ets, too.

So, join us this coming Sunday for our final stint, and limber up for the return of Spas­tachrist on April 16th, when he will be joined by William Bennet from out of noise whores White­house, play­ing an uncharach­ter­is­tic Italo Disco DJ set.

The Insti­tute for Elec­tronic Artists is an organ­i­sa­tion that has been estab­lished to aid, encour­age and pro­mote the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of elec­tronic music and art. We pro­vide a forum for pro­duc­ers of elec­tronic art to share ideas, net­work and build rela­tion­ships with other artists and people with related inter­ests, such as pro­mot­ers, DJs, VJs, etc.

Our events fea­ture music, video and images pro­duced by the artists present. Artists are invited to bring along there work on CD-R to be played or dis­played and cor­re­spond­ing art­work and com­poser details are dis­played using a projector.

Laud­able aims, and I like that they’re taking the risk of play­ing music and video by anyone who pitches up.

The Insti­tute also have a spot on Sub­c­ity Radio, every Monday at 10pm. After a quick listen to a recent show [.m3u stream], they seem to be defin­ing ‘electronic music’ fairly broadly, but steer­ing well clear of the wiggy fringes (every­thing I’ve heard so far has drums).

Per­haps I’ll pop along to the next event and foist a CD of me hoot­ing into a load of broken effects pedals on them.