Skip to main content

Bronwen Sleigh – Construct

Edinburgh Printmakers until July 20
4 stars
At first glance, this body of some thirty-eight architecture-based 
prints and 3D constructions look like blueprints for some Russian 
constructivist science-fiction futurescape built for a Tarkovsky film 
by way of a Ladybird book. Look closer, however, beyond the 
sleekly-angled swish of the lines, and you'll see that these visions of 
the future were built some time ago, be it as airports, stadiums or any 
other epically proportioned hub of congregation, comings or goings as 
befits of any international big city metropolis brimming with ambition.

There's a utopian urgency at play here, in images of locales that range 
 from Charles de Gaule airport in Paris to Meadowbank Stadium and beyond 
that look like nothing on earth. With everything seemingly in motion 
amidst a fanfare of metallic greens and bloodrush reds, there's a 
wide-eyed sense of wonder in Sleigh's stranger's gaze that suggests she 
too might have come from another planet. There's something heroic too 
in the wooden and wire constructions dotted about the gallery like some 
undiscovered stratosphere, implying a voyage of discovery at every 
turn.

One imagines the theme tune fanfares and sweeping strings of jet age 
pop anthropology show Wicker’s World being piped through these 
reimagined monuments as travellers pass through borders. Either that, 
or else the des-res idyll of 'Home Is Heavenly Springs,' the space-age 
installation brought to Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens by art/pop 
conceptualists A Sudden Sway a quarter of a century ago.

While the practical day-to-day reality of Sleigh's subjects  with all 
their failures, design faults and terminal obsolescence will never 
match her unsullied visions, Sleigh is in one sense capturing a purity 
of an imagined future that went beyond mere functionality. In this 
sense, 'construct' is a form of legitimised nostalgia, both for a past 
intent on conquering worlds, and for an age yet to come.
The List, June 2013

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL