Coffee-Table Notes

If money makes the world go round, its out of control axis is addressed at a historical and global level in this urgent and expansive new group show. Drawing its title from French thinker and writer Georges Bataille, nine contributors address the idea of debt in different ways, with the spectres of war, colonialism and economic exploitation ever present.     Congolese artist Sammy Baloji reconstitutes fifty copper mortar shell casings as plant pot accessories for ideal homes. A 1948 recording of a choir becomes similarly troubling once you learn how Christian missionaries made the singers hold copper crosses in front of their hearts.   Western influences are there too in  Terra Rationarium  (2018), Cian Dayrit’s trinket filled wooden cases, where toys and totems point up a damning history of exploitation in Dayrit’s native Philippines.  Working with marginalised communities, Dayrit’s series of tapestries map out strategies of change.   Moyra Davey’s  Copperheads  (1990-ongoing) is a se

When a woman wearing a going-out dress knelt on an Edinburgh pavement on King Stables Road outside a former municipal lighting depot and put a large chunk of chalk in her mouth, it was the prelude to a five-hour trip that saw the woman crawl in a circle onto the neighbouring streets, before arriving back on King Stables Road. As the woman marked out her path with the chalk still in her mouth, the white line on the pavement resembled a snail trail.   This was  Magdalene, Are You Satisfied with the Experiment?  a durational ‘installaction’ by Polish performance artist Karolina Kubik. Presented in honour of seminal theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, the event opened the 2015 edition of Hidden Door, the multiple arts festival that burst onto the scene the year before when it transformed a row of abandoned vaults on Market Street into ad hoc art spaces.    As an opening statement of a festival resembling an arts village in some radical republic, Kubik’s appearance was the perfect pointer of t

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four Stars Pity poor Pauline, the wannabe nightclub singer with a complicated love life in this increasingly dark comedy written and directed by Catriona MacLeod. Here is a woman who feels all washed up, with only her state of art washing machine for company, but who over the next hour will hangout her dirty laundry for all to see. As for her SUPERMAX3000 – or just Max, if you will - mechanical patter soon turns to soft soap soothing before Pauline ends up in even more hot water than she bargained for.  French fancies and fabric softener coloured shots act as sweeteners on entry to the latest in Vanishing Point Theatre Company’s series of ‘Unplugged’ small-scale shows designed for easy touring. Co-produced with Mull based arts centre An Tobar and Mull Theatre, MacLeod’s play initially looks like a stand-up inspired extended sketch ideal for the show’s cabaret table set up.    In fact, Vanishing Point’s current associate director uses a classic speculative fiction

Duncan Hendry – Producer, theatre manager, promoter Born November 9th 1951; died March 2 nd  2023     Duncan Hendry, who has died aged 71, was a producer, promoter and theatre manager who steered major venues to success in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. This followed Hendry’s tenure running Aberdeen Alternative Festival, which at one time was the second most popular arts festival in Scotland, with only Edinburgh Festival Fringe attracting bigger audiences.   A major coup for AAF saw Hendry bring soul legend James Brown to Scotland for the first time. This 1993 show was a one-off date that required Hendry to apply his considerable negotiating skills to the max. He continued to pioneer new ventures when he became the first chief executive of Aberdeen Performing Arts, which also oversaw the Music Hall.   A major venture saw Hendry produce a trilogy of Scottish literary classics for His Majesty’s Theatre. A restaging of Alastair Cording’s adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel, Sunset Song, a

Fun and games aplenty are to be had in this group show of sculptural works by twenty-two artists, brought together by Emma Hart and Dean Kenning as a collective show of class-conscious strength. The idea by Hart and Kenning is to seize the means of production in a more ad hoc way than the posh trappings of the mainstream art world may not always embrace.   The resultant counterblast to imposter syndrome is a workers playtime of a show, with an entertaining larkiness at its Fun Palace core that explores what Hart calls the ‘everyday thingness of sculpture… made of ordinary materials’. This ranges from the puppet-like figures aloft an iron bar in ‘ Oblivion’ (2021), Rosie McGinn’s small-scale reimagining of a rollercoaster ride; to  ‘Sulkamania’ (2019/2023), Aled Simons’ filmed re-enactment of how he became a bootleg Hulk Hogan.    Anne Ryan’s ‘Friday on My Mind’ (2022-23) is a floor level array of cut-out shapes depicting pleasure seekers in search of that elusive good time. Rebecca Mos

  When Kirkcaldy Galleries were dubbed the ‘Tate Gallery of Scotland’ in lectures by its first Convenor, local linen manufacturer John Blyth, the hype was due to the Galleries’ impressive collection of Scottish Colourist paintings. The accolade has stuck, and continues to capture the expanse of the Fife town’s main exhibition space. Not only does the gallery built in 1925 hold the largest collection of paintings by William McTaggart (1835-1910), it also has the second largest collection of works by Samuel Peploe (1871-1935) outside the National Galleries of Scotland, and many significant works by the Glasgow Boys.   More recently, an adventurous contemporary strand has been introduced, with works by the likes of Alison Watt now included in the collection. A £2.5m refurbishment of the building undertaken by Fife Council in 2013 has seen the Galleries expand operations, so it now houses a museum, library, PC suite, café and gift shop, as well as spaces for community and educational work.

Glasgow Film Theatre,  11 March, 9pm; 2 March, 12.45pm. Four stars When Camden Town indie-dance tearaways Flowered Up released Weekender in 1992, this snarling thirteen-minute dance culture anthem caused all sorts of bother. The just shy of twenty-minute film accompanying the record’s urgent paean to 24/7 working-class hedonism probably didn’t help. Only Channel 4 had the bottle to show it, as the gutter press frothed with predictably sensationalist ire.    An early outing from video director WIZ, aka Andrew Whiston, Weekender charted a big night out for likely lad Joe, played by TV actor Lee Whitlock, with all the highs, lows, pills, thrills and bellyaches that ensued. Some of the film’s mix of social-realist grit and chemically enhanced dreamscape may resemble the bleakness of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, with whom WIZ studied, but it also set the tone for a million mad-for-it movies to come. Danny Boyle apparently said there would have been no Trainspotting film without it.