One of the more intriguing gallery spaces at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe is 13 Claremont Crescent. The home and boutique bed & breakfast of artist Michael Worobec and husband features work on three floors of an elegantly refurbished 1820s townhouse designed by William Burn.
Worobec mixes figurative, abstract and geometric approaches with elements of graphic design – intriguing combinations he often uses to unpick the destructive or enslaving influence of patriarchy.
Sometimes such violence erupts in war. The poet Wilfred Owen is set amid shards of glass or shrapnel, straddled as if by shell holes.
[Dulce et Decorum Est, oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm]
Sometimes, it is expressed culturally, as in Hollywood’s coded suppression of womanhood. Rita Hayworth’s fragile beauty is set amid half-seen butterflies, grenades, and the glamour of stardom.
[Butterfly Girl Stars and Grenades, oil on canvas, 200 x 120 cm]
Worobec is a gay man born in Scotland to Italian and Ukrainian parents. ‘These huge moral dictums [Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church] crashed into my world. Moral structures and commands did not sit well with my liberal and progressive feelings and resulted in many years of anxiety and self-doubt.
‘Art and the creative process have always been my companions in this journey of self- knowledge and acceptance and have given me a voice to express my passion for social justice and self-freedom’
For all its seriousness of purpose, a tour of the exhibition (partially guided by the artist himself) is an upbeat and cheering experience, filled with conversation, interest, light, and colour in spacious surrounds.
Better still – it’s free.
‘Arcadia at the Crescent’ runs daily from noon to 4.30 p.m. at Crescent House (Venue 109). Note: Venue not suitable for under-12s due to low banister and long drop.
