Glasgow International Visual Art Festival 2010
Travelled Thursday by train from Lancaster, really nice way to travel when everything is on time.
Couple of items that were really good, a lot of it was colorless and often badly put together, however I did not actually get into Art Gallery in the traditional sense.
These images were part of sculpture exhibition, Vestiges, really very good but these mirror like sculptures reflected the surroundings which made them very errie and ghostly. The other objects and sculptures were either so obscure as to be incomprehensible or badly constructed.
The video clip of a moving sculpture which was really intriguing.
Visiting the “Tramway” was an eye opener, in that it was a huge art centre complex with a huge range of gallery space plus rooms for art classes etc.
In part of the building there was three installations by Christophe Bouchel, on a large and detailed scale, first was a Celtic FC supporters bar of the 70-80′s and next door was the Rangers equivalent even the smell of beer and ciggy smoke was there, I am not sure what the artist was trying to say other then that football was like a religion, because it was like a shrine to the club, its players and managers over the years. These two bars were built in to shipping containers which made the installation even more claustrophobic.
Then next door inside of a huge space was an installation of a prison around the periphery walls, again in containers, there bunk rooms, mess rooms, visiting area for families,wardens office full of files in huge piles, (obviously before computers took over the world), washrooms and loos. All was very depressing as I am sure it was meant to be, one could almost touch and talk to past inmates, feel the hopelessness and despair.
In the central area was a truly amazing installation, a real crashed jet aircraft was being reconstructed as I imagine forensic engineers undertake in actual incidents.
There were rows of burnt out seats, tables laid out with burnt and torn clothing, even some child’s doll, partially burnt, shards of shattered lighting tubes, huge amounts of tubing, pipe work all twisted and torn.
I left the installations really feeling depressed, but the sheer scale was impressive.
