Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Pump House Gallery, London
16 February – 10 April
Reviewed by: Roy Exley
The video installations of Glasgow-based artist Katy Dove use hand-drawn and hand-painted blobs, balloons, ellipses and patches of colour as their basic image constituents. The pulsing and weaving neo-psychedelic forms that inhabit her films have simple origins, their organic shapes evocative of the forms favoured by Joan Miró, Hans Arp or perhaps Frantisek Kupka, are multi-layered and animated so that they shift, morph and shimmy to the rhythms of the background music or sound samples. Some of the movements of the forms are repetitive and jerky with a choreographic feel – this is one plane of existence in Dove’s multi-layered alternative universe. Other forms, often the more ethereal ones, change more slowly, spreading like stains or growing like bacterial cultures, their seductively coloured slithering and sliding components reminiscent of the oil-slides used in the psychedelic light shows of bands like Pink Floyd or Jefferson Airplane in the late 1960s.
On one level Dove’s work has a distinctly handmade, retro quality, but on another, with the sampled or computer-generated sound-tracks, and the computer-generated animation that keeps the handmade forms in a constant motion of complex patterns and configurations, it fits comfortably into the contemporary arena, alongside the work of such cutting edge artists as David Burrows, Neal Rock or Raqib Shaw – and that would be a show to whet the appetite!
Dove’s DVD presentation The Sway radiates an innocent charm with its delicately layered and fidgeting chromatic shapes whose movements suggest an ornithological narrative, while the mesmeric multi-layered bird calls and songs that surround us, lull us into a calm passivity that defers any narrative quest. Amanda brings a greater sense of urgency as the choreography of the forms faithfully synchronises with the driving, shuffling, shambling rhythms of loosely played laid-back indie music…a sample smuggled out of a stoned jam session perhaps. The sense of playfulness here, with the seductively colourful visual games, and whimsical sound samples, definitely makes you want to come back for more.
Writer detail:
Roy Exley
Venue detail:
Pump House Gallery
Battersea Park, London SW11 4NJ
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