Skip to main content

Alasdair Gray – Spheres of Influence I and II

GOMA until May 25th 2015/Glasgow School of Art until January 25th 2015
Five stars

It's only too fitting that programme image for the first of these two
shows that form part of the Glasgow-wide Alasdair Gray season, lovingly
and meticulously put together by Sorcha Dallas to mark Glasgow's
original renaissance man's eightieth year, is a compass. For both the
GOMA show it heralds and its accompanying GSA show join the dots
between those who influenced this poppiest of classicists and those who
followed in his wake, with Gray both wide-eyed bridge and beacon
between the two.

So at GOMA we move from Durer's crucifixions, Blake's judgements and
Aubrey Beardsley's erotic politesse to Japanese figurative art, line
drawings by David Hockney, the vintage poetics of Adrian Wiszniewski
and Chad McCail's poster-size take on wisdom and experience. The
umbilical links between these and Gray's own works are made plain, yet
remain tantalisingly fresh even as the join is gloriously exposed.

Over at Gray's alma mater things are brought even closer to home, as
volumes poached from Gray's own home library including a Radio Times
annual appear alongside book covers for his own work and contemporaries
such as Agnes Owens. There's a mix of the meta-physical and the
grizzled in pieces by Eric Gill, drawings by Peter Howson and the
rad-fem desires of Dorothy Iannone, while Stuart Murray's dole culture
cartoons bring things bang up to date.

The frontispieces of each of the four books that make up Gray's 1981
novel, Lanark, which reimagined Glasgow as a fantastical
magical-realist kingdom, appear in both shows as pivotal works. Adorned
with super-heroic bodies set against infinitely accessible but densely
detailed landscapes, seen together they are comic-book multi-verses
writ large.

Finally, Hanna Tuulikki's two pen and ink images, Ascension and Fall,
encapsulate the spiritual, the erotic and the heroic, the holy trinity
of Gray's world, which grows more magical by the day.


The List, December 2014


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