Dundee Contemporary Arts until July 7
4 stars
You can all but hear a wash of psychedelic harpsichords as you wander
through this first major show by this increasingly high-profile and
cannily commercial Dundee trained illustrator., so Carnaby Street
retro-groovy are the charmingly decorative array of Basford's faux
Edwardiana inspired images. To find the way into this, one first has to
navigate through a maze-like forest of large-scale images of trees.
Once inside, the plural of the show's title is made crucial via an
array of crowd-sourced woodland creatures, cuckoo clocks and prints
with the word 'LOVE' emblazoned, all writ large in a series of
baroque-curlicued black and white images.
Beyond the voguish (and indeed Voguish) quasi product placement in one
of the smaller rooms, it's the larger than life work that really
matters. The coffee table magazine friendly wallpaper is epic enough in
its overwhelming ornateness, but the leaf-tattooed showroom dummies and
the sailing boat on which a fanciful voyage is projected behind
suggests an imagination that is already looking towards ever greater
horizons in a way that remains idyllic without ever falling prey to
tweeness. For that alone, 'Wonderlands' is worth jumping down the
rabbit-hole to see it in all its bright-eyed glory.
The List, June 2013
ends
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