Skip to main content

Andy Hope 1930 - When Dinosaurs Become Modernists 


Inverleith House, Edinburgh
November 1 to January 13 2013
4 stars
Scary monsters and super-creeps abound in the Berlin-based artist 
formerly known as Andreas Hofer's first UK museum exhibition, which 
features five new works among an epic forty-one on show. Seen side by 
side, there are moments when they resemble an outsize pulp fiction 
collage of pop culture ephemera swirling around Hofer's brain, 
over-lapping each other as they burst through the frame. Even the fact 
that Andy Hope 1930 has a secret identity speaks volumes about where 
he's coming from.

Because, drawing a line between Roy Lichtenstein and Daniel Johnston, 
Andy Hope 1930 takes the  trash aesthetic of golden age comic book 
iconography and invests it with a subverted mythology born of the more 
questioning, me-generation years. So, against a Zabriskie Point style 
landscape in 'Impressions d'Amerique', Batman and Robin are dressed as 
The Lone Ranger and Tonto, making the umbilical link between 
existentialist outlaw (super)heroes of old and new America as he goes.

  The nod to French proto-surrealist Raymond Roussel, who so influenced 
a generation of New York poets, is as knowing as the wonkified 
charity-shop Kurt Schwitters homage, the portrait of John Baldessari as 
Marvel Comics super-villain Galactus, which comes complete with extra 
added Jesus, and the strip cartoon take of Linda Lee as Supergirl. 
Because, amongst the desolate landscapes that recall the early work of 
Wim Wenders, another German fascinated with the Wild West reinvented as 
post-war counter-culture, Andy Hope 1930 needs heroes to call his own.

Of course, there are dinosaurs, be they larger than life and hidden 
behind wall-papered candy-stripes, or pocket-sized and contained, as 
they are in 'The Education Dinosaur Movie Hall'. This earth's core 
installation is a cardboard box peep-show into a Ray Harryhausen-style 
parallel universe where dinosaurs watch science-fiction B-movies at the 
local drive-in. As evolution goes, it's a spaced oddity, for sure. 

The List, November 2012

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art School Dance Goes On Forever – Snapshots Of Masters Of The Multiverse

Intro – Snapshots – Deaf School

1

In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.

This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.

The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.

The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
Post a Comment
Read more

Peter Brook – The Prisoner

Peter Brook is no stranger to Scotland, ever since the guru of European and world theatre first brought his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to Glasgow in 1988. That was at the city’s old transport museum, which by 1990 had become Tramway, the still-functioning permanent venue that opened up Glasgow and Scotland as a major channel for international theatre in a way that had previously only been on offer at Edinburgh International Festival.
Brook and his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord company’s relationship with Tramway saw him bring his productions of La Tragedie de Carmen, La Tempete, Pellease et Mellisande, The Man Who…, and Oh Les Beaux Jours – the French version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – to Glasgow.
Thirty years on from The Mahabharata, Brook comes to EIF with another piece of pan-global theatre as part of a residency by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, which Brook has led since he decamped to Paris from London in the early 1970s. The current Edinburgh residency has alr…
Post a Comment
Read more

Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare's Globe Comes to Glasgow

Open-air Shakepeares are a summer-time perennial of the theatre calendar, attracting picnicking audiences as much as midges. More often than not, such romps through the grass are frothy, heritage industry affairs designed to be accompanied by strawberries and cream and not to be taken too seriously. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre company look set to change such perceptions when they open their outdoor tour of Romeo And Juliet in Glasgow next week as part of the West End festival.

For the two young actors taking the title roles of the doomed lovers, it will also be something of a homecoming. Richard Madden and Ellie Piercy both studied in Glasgow prior to turning professional. Indeed, Madden has yet to graduate from the acting course at RSAMD, and, as well as facing the pressures of playing such a meaty role in close proximity to the audience, will have the added anxiety of being assessed and graded by his tutors.

“This is the end of my third year,” says Madden following a Saturday mornin…
Post a Comment
Read more