Coffee-Table Notes

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars    When senior public figures publish a warts and all memoir, it is customary for them these days to go on a high profile promotional tour. Some enjoy meeting their public so much that the stars in their eyes get the better of them, and they join the showbiz sleb set, with everything they might have previously achieved lost in the razzmatazz.    So it goes with Scottish Police Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson, the hapless breakout star of comic cop mock doc, Scot Squad. As brought to life by veteran comedy auteur Jack Docherty, the Chief, or Cam the Bam, as he is known disaffectionately among what he might call his online community, has penned No Apologies. This tome is based on the befuddled Commissioner’s terminally unreconstructed way of saying the wrong thing on a public platform.    As the title implies, Miekelson manages to bluster his way into an ever-deeper hole with every utterance. This shows off an...

The shock of the new stands firm in this exhibition by Simon Phipps, whose long-term documentation of Brutalist architecture has given already dramatic constructions a sense of era defining largesse from what may or may not have been a golden age of town planning.   Throughout the gallery’s two rooms, a panoramic display resembles production stills from the opening credits of a late 1960s/early 1970s TV drama about sharp suited urbanists intent on creating new worlds made out of concrete and glass. In actuality, Phipps has mapped out a space age psychogeography already predicted by Fritz Lang and mythologised by J.G. Ballard as it transformed the post Second World War built environment in monumental fashion.   Here, Phipps presents a travelogue of civic spaces designed for a brave new world beyond the tenement slums of yesterday to the clean line abstractions looking out onto tomorrow. This comes in the solid form of office blocks, car parks and cathedrals, shopping ...

Yield Strength is an engineering term that defines the amount of stress a material can take before it is permanently changed. It is also the name given to the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art by this edition’s curator, Ellie Buttrose. Rather than impose a theme from the start, the name was chosen after the twenty-four artists who make up the showcase were selected.   With the Biennial spread across the Art Gallery of South Australia as well as the Samstag Museum of Art and Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Yield Strength seems to capture the spirit of some of Buttrose’s discoveries during her selection process.   “As I was travelling, I noticed that there was kind of a general return to artists really playing with materials,” says the Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. “There seemed to be a lot of push and pull going on in the work, and this sense that things cannot go back to the way they were after you've pushed...

The Pavilion, Glasgow Four stars  When a country celebrates itself, it is a show of confidence and strength. When it does it too much, it’s probably time to worry. As the all singing, all dancing comic troupe delivering Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie’s irreverent potted history of Caledonia in song suggests from the off, however, this is Scotland. It does things differently. Most of the time, anyway.  Jemima Levick’s production begins and ends in the toilet, that centre of the universe from whence all manner of human waste is purged. It is also one of Scotland’s many great inventions. Here, this monumental porcelain pan immortalised as something more regal on Kenny Miller’s set manifests itself in the flesh by way of the lanky form of Tyler Collins. Dressed like a giant baseball capped condom in Saltire patterned pants, Collins becomes our host for the evening in a fast moving compendium of selected high and low lights from Scotland’s last 1200 years.   Like Horri...

An internationally renowned Scottish writer who bequeathed his library to the French town where he lived for more than forty years on the proviso that his former home be retained as ‘a place of inspiration, a place of life and thought’ has had his wishes overturned by the local municipality. Glasgow born poet and academic Kenneth White, who died in 2023 aged 87, also donated EURO100,000 (£86,277.81) to the  council to enable his wishes to create a Kenneth White Residence for Artists and Writers.    The Trébeurden Council in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in north western France now has plans to sell the house along with the vast collection of books it currently contains. At a meeting in January this year, Trébeurden’s mayor Bénédicte Boiron declared that “The most likely future of the house will be a sale…. A complete inventory will be carried out. Books can't stay in the house.”   This has prompted outrage amongst the international...

Òran Mór , Glasgow  Four stars    Poor Joy. Despite her name, she just can’t see the funny side of life. As a terminally single librarian, her world isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs anyway, especially not in the Emilys section, where Ms’s Bronte and Dickinson provide some kind of comfort. This would be one more thing to blame the parents for if they were around. As Joy makes clear when she goes on a date with a wannabe comedian who tests out his new material on her, however, she just doesn’t get the joke. Or any joke, for that matter. This prompts Joy’s date to suggest she desperately seek help, medical or otherwise, in order to try and find her sense of humour.    We know all this because Joy tells all in a glorious monologue by Morna Young that sees Naomi Stirrat embody our heroine in all her specky, tweedy, geeky glory. Presented as a stand-up show, Alex Fthenakis’ production charts Joy’s progress across a series of routines in a comic memoir that uses e...