Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute
5 June – 24 August
Reviewed by: Moira Jeffrey
For some artists the chance to create work in response to a particular location might be viewed as an opportunity, for others it provides a set of unwelcome constraints. When the site is as visually and socially loaded as Mount Stuart – an outstanding and eccentric Victorian family seat renowned for its faux-medieval interiors, excellent paintings and a bed purchased from the collection of William Randolph Hearst – the risks are high.
Christine Borland, an artist renowned for a sanguine temperament when tackling complex and emotive subjects – from forensics to genetics – has characteristically kept her head. In keeping with her long explorations into medicine and science she has side-stepped the obvious to focus on a lesser-known period in Mount Stuart's history, its use as a naval hospital during World War I.
Borland has added to The Velocity of Drops, her long-standing series of photographs showing smashed watermelons in unlikely and provocative locations. Here, the split skins and overflowing juice, evoke the torn flesh of the wounded and the social convulsions of the period. The family seat, such a powerful image of unchanging values and the imperviousness of authority, is revealed as a changing and vulnerable landscape.
Each photograph marks the use of a room during the period: the conservatory as an operating theatre; the library an x-ray room; the grand dining room a medical ward. A pool of juice on the grand marble staircase bears the reflection of ornate floral-stained glass windows. The contrast between ripe red flesh, and the textures of the building – white marble, warm dark wood, and rich oriental carpet – provides a troubling dissonance. This is a successful commission and marks out historic Mount Stuart's recent gallery space as a contemporary art venue with considerable ambition.
Writer detail:
Moira Jeffrey is a writer based in Glasgow.
Venue detail:
Mount Stuart Gallery
Rothesay, Bute PA20 9LR
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