The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Allusion: Clutha to Tatha
Tatha Gallery, Newport-On-Tay, until September 23
The subtitle of this new group show of artwork is taken from the Gaelic names for the two rivers which have most significance to those involved.
“Clutha” refers to the River Clyde and “Tatha” to the River Tay, and it’s on the banks of each that the work of the group involved has been seen.
First organised by members of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 2015, the Allusion exhibition has headed north-east to the Tatha Gallery in Newport-on-Tay at the insistence of RGI member Ronnie Forbes, the former Head of Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, who is based in Dundee.
“The exhibition generated much interest and enthusiasm from visitors,” says Forbes. “Our group is very happy to be showing a completely new exhibition, which has been organised by myself and Helen Glassford and Lindsay Bennett of Tatha Gallery. I’ve known Helen since she was a student at Duncan of Jordanstone, she’s a successful artist who, with energy and vision, has created a beautiful gallery from a dilapidated space.”
“Allusion: Clutha to Tatha is an exhibition of 45 works by 15 members of the RGI whose visions could be considered a part of the narrative tradition,” says Glassford.
“This exhibition’s title is a comment on the fact that art can and should reach beyond the place it was made.
“Ideas travel, and art is a human attempt to understand and describe the world around us. The subjects and methods have different traditions but the motivations and goals are fundamentally the same.”
Forbes will be showing four painted works based on his responses to the paintings of Vermeer, whose work was a great influence in his early career, and Glassford points out that the sense of narrative manifests itself in different ways.
“Ade Adesina’s otherworldly and physical linocuts are firmly connected to present cultural and global issues,” she says, “while Jimmy Cosgrove shows us a distorted yet familiar narrative of Scottish life. His paintings are a parallel world which is more like an observed stage set, where all the scenes are intertwined, to be seen in one sitting.
“Neil MacPherson’s high-key paintings are of couples nervously rooted within their homeland, and ‘The Thanksgiving’ is an idyllic yet slightly uncomfortable oil painting that has the ability to hold our gaze and thoughts. Time stands still here.
“Adrian Wiszniewski treats us to a luminous and intense insight into a moment of ‘sonic therapy’, a piece which truly radiates the energetic yet thoughtprovoking vibe which weaves its way through all of the pieces in this show.”