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reviews Let Me show You soMe things
Let Me show You
soMe things
CCA gLAsgow & gLAsgow FiLM FestivAL
16 FebruArY – 29 M ArCh
screening of sarah tripp,
Let Me Show You Some
Things, 2008 (30 min),
with seating and
sculptural installation
by robert orchardson.
Photo: Alan Dimmick.
Courtesy CCA glasgow
Let Me Show You Some Things takes it title from Sarah Tripp’s specially Tripp’s film looks like the fenestration of the DDR-era department store
commissioned 2008 short film that centres on the relationship between Centrum Warenhaus, in Alexanderplatz, recycled here as a B-movie set.
a brother and sister. The siblings differ in many ways: she is Scots, Goth, His work creates a nostalgic armature for Tripp’s films and for the Magic
languid, introspective, given to mysticism; he is English, scally, hardworking, Lantern’s programme. The sweeping triumphalist forms mix 1970s Soviet
outgoing, practical and cynical. They get on – and on each other’s nerves Bloc retrofuturism – an all-too-common trope among Glasgow-based
– in cycles, the dramatic action shrewdly muffled by the brother’s bedsit artists – with less familiar, more overtly cinematic elements of 1950s sci-fi.
wherein they kill time. When it gets too claustrophobic, the brother takes The Magic Lantern’s programme of shorts develops the hybrid
his melancholic sister to a party or the fairground to cheer her up, but this curatorial ambitions, offering a smorgasbord of media. The shorts have been
doesn’t seem to have the desired effect. sensitively curated to perfectly complement and augment the key themes
In one scene, they compare objects that they have kept from their of Tripp’s short: dominant–submissive relationships (Ian Gouldstone’s Guy
childhood. What isn’t said explicitly about their family is externalised 101, 2004), dejected childhood memories (Chris Shepherd’s Dad’s Dead,
through the objects’ biographies. Discomforted by the recollection of his 2003), dysfunctional introspection (David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd’s
father’s smoking, the brother continually chastises his sister for smoking. Who I Am and What I Want, 2005) and the social life of material culture
His remonstrations, in turn, remind her of her father. The cigarette here (Jes Benstock’s Holocaust Tourist, 2006).
enters into the chain of meanings that are only understood familially, sibling Artist-led cinemas such as Newcastle’s Star and Shadow cinema
knowledge that remains firmly locked up in the fiction. The audience are and Edinburgh’s Pedal Panopticon are an important emerging trend, so
left to infer what’s at stake, to fill the narrative gaps. it’s significant that Tripp has turned her hand to dramatic films, part of a
Tripp has never restricted herself to the limitations of genre or to tendency towards the convergence of media and genres that can be seen in
working exclusively as an ‘artist’; she’s just as much a designer, a writer, the practice of a mounting number of ‘artists’ featured in the Glasgow Film
whatever she wants to be. It’s appropriate, then, that her film is framed Festival. Artists’ dramatic film is, nevertheless, tempered by a tendency
by Robert Orchardson’s sculptural practice and the programme of shorts towards precis, to parsing the seeming infinitude of values and desires into
provided by the Magic Lantern, an independent monthly short-film night a suggestive, distilled form in a way that relates closely to object making
run in Glasgow by Penny Bartlett and Rosie Crerar. and gift giving. Maybe this is why objects still play such a pivotal role in the
Orchardson’s videotheque is another form of hybrid, part sculptural construction of Tripp’s story and throughout this richly layered exhibition.
installation, part furniture. The large screen that shares the main gallery with Neil Mulholland
Artreview 138
REVIEWS_April Part 1.indd 138 3/3/08 13:58:54
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