Eric Steen- Market Gallery Pub School and Market Gallery Pub

Eric Steen is a Portland based artist who was at Market Gallery for GI. He set up a series of pub school events in which we went on brewery tours and met brewers. The culmination of it all was the market gallery pub, for which myself and James Stephen Wright made an alcoholic ginger beer called Thrush. I also volunteered as a server for the bar so I got to see some amazing things (like a fridge that had been converted into a chiller and pump) and felt a strange sense of pride at seeing my own brew being enjoyed by so many people (a feeling shared by my fellow server who made a delicious vanilla oatmeal stout). I was hoping to learn something about the organisation side of Erics practice and I did attempt to get in touch Scott Williams from Williams Bros. brewery on Erics behalf while he was still in the states but I didnt seem to get very far compared with Eric. On the bright side I did learn the value of having a solid professional (and open) appearance through things like blogs and websites in convincing people to get onboard with projects. Central to this seemed to be Eric's ability to send people concise artists statements.

The other big lesson from all this is how individual the role of an artist in a community can be. While Eric managed to bring together home brewers from all over Scotland, it is conceivable that this might happen in at least a small way in internet forums and craft groups. What made this special was that Eric was able to get the home brewers together in order to supply free home brewed beer to the public in a safe environment. Now that its over I can see a few of the home brewers meeting up and exchanging beers but i doubt that there will be a public appreciation and discovery of so many home brewed beers again without someone like Eric creating an event like that, which had contributions from a few commercial brewers too.

Christophe Buchel- Last Man Out Turn Off The Lights

Far and away the most exciting thing I've seen at GI this year. At the start you're given a health and safety notice and given instructions not to harm yourself or climb ladders. I started off going into a celtic bar, which is mirrored by a rangers bar on the other side and all of it is contained within a shipping container. At the end of each bar is a ladder (I later discovered that the ladders were intended to be used but H&S decided it was too dangerous. This is a real shame as, having seen the full work, this seemed like an ideal portal to the rest of the work). At this point there was a feeling of anti-climax until we discovered another small entrance which soon revealed itself as a prison entrance. The whole place was eerily spooky but we could hear people tramping on iron grating somewhere inside and a tension started to build. I was vaguely aware of a fear of meeting real or even acting inmates or even something else. All I really knew was that I was quite scared of what might come next. You continue through more unlocked, barred gates which increase the tension each time until you suddenly come out into a wide open space that is filled with the torso of a destroyed passenger aeroplane. It is just a skeleton although some of its outside pieces have been reattached while the rest of its remains lay about, mostly sorted into sections (chairs, dolls, suitcases, oxygen masks etc.) Around the planes carcass are more shipping containers that contain a continuance of the prison. You soon realise that not only is there everything a prison could need, from an arts and crafts room to an autopsy table but that the level of detail is staggering. In fact the two most impressive things about this exhibition are the incredible feat of building this installation in the time required and the sheer dearth of information in the form of objects. There are posters of girls on the cell walls, matches, paperwork stacked high, a ship made from matchsticks and even fire alarms on the walls. In one container there is a workshop for the processing of the plane parts which seems to blur the line between the two but it seems unnecessary. Whether the plane is there as something that the inmates work on as part of the whole narrative or not doesnt seem to need answering. the fact is that through the collection of huge amounts of detail and the meticulous building of a huge environment, this seems to be the only place on earth that you can or ever will experience a very real situation of being in a plane crash, an old firm tension and a prison all at once. This is such an incredible experience that it seems to over-rule the question of 'what does it all mean?' or 'why was it done?'.

Jim Lambie- Metal Urbain

This exhibition seems to be mostly concerned with the transformation of metal, though it looses none of Lambies neo-pop art style with bright colours and thick, viscous paint on many surfaces, reflected in the occasional mirrors on the floor. The mirrors sit amongst rusted steel sheets which mix a sinister voyeuristic intent with a strong sense of a factory floor. On the walls sheets of metal have been coloured and folded to look like dog-eared sheets of paper and I cant quite figure out how the metal has been folded like this. On the floor on concrete plinths that partly consume the objects are metal squares of crushed used-to-be-things. It becomes quite fun trying to figure out what used to be a cooker and what used to be a suit of armour and on and on. The suit of armour brings up questions of frivolity and preciousness. It seems an in-grained impulse in me that old things are treated with care, not crushed. However this is tempered with the imagination of how much fun it must be to put things in a compactor and crush them. I wish Id been there.

Heather Cook- Ten Til Ten

In an empty office space which I noticed has a curious smell of unoccupied office. Where does this smell come from? Its very particular. Heather Cooks works are huge geometric pieces of textiles which have a huge weight as they seem to tug on the walls. When you get closer you realise that the large folds in the fabric are screen printed on and instantly the fabric and the room become lighter. It seems a simple trick but very effective, almost alchemical.

David Noonan- Spiel

The room in the Mitchell library is very particular and the white walls, though tall, dont cover the opulence of the building higher up which can distract from the exhibition. This was my only concern though. The white walls were intermittently cut by pinkish brown hessian, making both look more purposeful. The hessian looks soft and mimics the colour of the printed wooden cut outs that stand large in the room. When you get closer to them you realise this is because they too are hessian, printed onto so that close up the pictures become pixellated by the texture of the fabric. The cut outs are huge but because they are flat they leave an absence in the room too which is curious. They look marvellous and inspire my imagination. One looks like a huge deformed Guy Fawkes, another a mix between a flag and a strange monster, with human feet poking out the bottom. Theres obviously a story, somewhere slightly more towards revolution than celebration, but its never fully revealed and Im excited by the denial of a definite answer. The cut outs stand as if on a stage in a play that each person has an outcome for.

Kate Davis and Faith Wilding- The Loch Long: How Do We Go On From Here?

At the start it seems confusing whether this is two people in a group show or a collaboration on all the works. By the end I decided that it was the former. I was irritable when I went to see this as I was visiting lots of galleries and was concerned about time and as a result I decided that some of the works at the start were too wordy and demanding. In the projection room, through a silver curtain which promised something special, I waited in darkness, enjoying the idea that the projection might never start, a test of my patience. When it did start it also suffered from my lack of patience as it spent too long with things that were too ephemeral and it required a lot of your imagination to find create a thread of narrative, which seemed to be the format it was presented in. In the main room however I was much happier with things. There were exciting objects like two huge science beakers with dyes and a piece of white muslin acting as a bridge between the two, soaking up the dyes so that they would, you imagine, meet in the middle and merge. the dye colours matched the colour choices of the drawings on the walls which were all pinks and greens, delicate lines creating a balance between body parts and plants. My favourite piece was an old film projector in which the film had been twisted to be re-fed in so that the film was looped. It was fascinating to look at the projector, as well as the looped film. The film itself was also very beautiful; a hand with long spindly fingers moving with such purpose that it looked like it had a strange self awareness. It seemed to mime different actions as if it was cleaning the wood surface below but it moved so smoothly that it seemed almost certain that it wasnt touching the surface, only pretending to. The film seemed a whole world in itself but it was let down slightly by the disctraction of the projector itself, and I found it hard deciding which one to look at at all times.

Alice Channer- Inhale, Exhale

The most notable part of this exhibition was the huge reams of paper. They hung roof to floor making them look designed for the space and any small gusts of wind made them billow slowly. I think the size changes the speed of the object in this case. The movement of the paper makes a clear link with the personified title. On closer inspection though the paper was held together with bits of sellotape which was a let down. I imagined the sheets of paper would be whole. The other works in the space seemed to talk about tension and released tension, whether it be a print of a torn waistband (with connotations of a bad night out or possibly a sexual attack documented in 2 prints) or the bright elastic held at its top by a bent steel arm and at its bottom by huge marble beads that look like theyve been turned by machines. My favourite part was the simplicity of the way the steel arm was bent around a huge wooden roof strut so that it wouldnt damage the building. the precariousness of its reach and the way it curled round the beam looked almost like a human overreaching.