REVIEW: 'PAPERWORK 2' AT THE EDINBURGH SKI CLUB
For the third year in a row, the Working Lines collective are staging an exhibition as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.
Paperwork 2 is refreshingly free of hoopla, with the four artists involved – all students or recent graduates from Edinburgh College of Art – displaying recent work in a variety of complementary styles.
Their contributions are uncluttered, quiet, contemplative, subtle, modestly sized and affordable.
Ruth Thomas’s studies of rock pools and tidal lines explore the flux and stasis of such salty micro worlds ('Rockpool 1' above; 'Entwined' below).
Whilst sometimes extraordinarily detailed, her works are no mere exercises in accurate draftsmanship. There is also a wonderful vagueness here, a willingness to play with tone and levels of transparency which renders parts of the images semi-abstract. I really enjoy them.
Sheila Chapman’s paintings are more figurative.
As displayed here, behind glass, they are also rather difficult to photograph. So, I’m afraid you’ll have to content yourself with a blurry version of her ‘Great Blue Heron’.
Another favourite was her watercolour, ink and gouache ‘Coming through the Mangroves’, a work which reminded me of Peter Doig’s tropical excursions, only on a more practical and affordable scale.
I imagine Marion Barron’s oil and inks will not appeal to everybody. But once one relaxes, once one accepts that they don’t particularly resemble anything, their audacious simplicity is a pleasure.
I liked the unexplained relationship between, or coincidence of, the threadlike departures from the vertical and horizontal in several of the works. I was also intrigued by the transitory illusion of depth, the contradictory stillness and sense of motion within the image below.
Trevor Davis’s works here are self-confessedly varied: ‘I don’t seem capable of sticking to a single style or theme,’ he writes in the exhibition’s accompanying notes. ‘There’s so much to see and to respond to.’
I enjoyed his mysterious ‘Ice Age Venus’ in acrylic and crayon …
and also the unhelpfully titled ‘Scott’s grey turns blue’ in oil, ink and graphite. Altogether, it’s an egglike enigma, and the detail below – where one tiny section of the form's uneven edge is picked out – I find absolutely delicious.—AM
Paperwork 2 continues at Venue 208 (2 Howe Street) until 31 September. Admission free.
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E-mail from Trevor Davies: Because in Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge there is a tiny painting by William Scott of the silhouette of a white bowl on a grey ground. It’s exquisite. I made it bigger and changed the grey to blue. Hence “Scott’s grey turns blue”