REVIEWS ALEX POLLARD
Black Marks, 2007 (installation view,
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh).
© Talbot Rice Gallery/Paul Zanre.
Courtesy Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow
ALEX POLLARD:
BLACK MARKS
TALBOT RICE GALLERY, EDINBURGH
21 APRIL – 2 JUNE
Introducing their 1986 study The Triumph of Pierrot, Martin Green and John are more imposing and bombastic, dominating the central space on a large
Swan comment that the commedia dell’arte ‘is not an idea or a meaning, but plinth. Romos Getting Ready is a series of collage-drawings in which the
a collection of images with many meanings’. The same could be said of snapped pencils used to make the image blend with the marks they have
Alex Pollard’s exhibition Black Marks. Which, as Pollard has stated, is not made, completing the portraits.
‘about’ New Romanticism, clowns or cosmetics per se, but plays with the As the titling testifi es, every aspect of this exhibition has been
imagery of these subjects in an imaginative and fantastical manner rather considered in exceptional detail. Black Marks seems to refer to the
than providing a literal representation or response. Pollard’s more oblique Pierrot story in which Pierrot’s white suit becomes covered in the black
approach is wise, given that he has chosen to deal with references which marks of ordinary children’s hands (perhaps an allegory for the inevitable
are well worn both in art history and in contemporary art. Characters from contamination of the avant-garde with kitsch). Equally specifi c, the
the commedia dell’arte have exerted an enduring hold on artists, including ‘Romos’ are the kohled dandies of the shortlived British Romo movement
Watteau, Goya, Picasso, Klee and Hockney, while New Romanticism, – a mid-1990s derivative of 1980s New Romantics. With the implied
1980s nostalgia and dandyism have become recurrent subjects for artists musical soundtrack and the ritual of ‘putting on your face’, the works evoke
such as Mark Leckey, Enrico David and Lucy McKenzie. So it’s gratifying subjects and styles as diverse as Arcimboldo, Hockney and quattrocentro
that Pollard’s inventive imaginings allude to this imagery in a sophisticated portraiture. In the upper gallery a series of oil paintings depicting abstracted
and resolved way. In uniting these central interests, Black Marks parallels fi gures of clowns are sinister and melancholic. Their bodies made up of
and cites one of the artist’s key sources – David Bowie’s Pierrot in the 1980 distorted mirror refl ections of the same brands and types of cosmetics
pop video Ashes to Ashes. used elsewhere, it’s clear that self-reference is integral to this exhibition and
The presentation of Black Marks is exquisite and exacting. Nightscape to Pollard’s broader practice.
(all works 2007), a reworking of a wall drawing in Torch Sculptures at Maybe Pollard would love to be more spontaneous or less perfecting
Sorcha Dallas in 2006, covers two sides of the main gallery. An abstract in his execution of works such as Nightscape and Romos Getting Ready
composition which suggests a landscape, it is composed of contorted but can’t quite bring himself to do it – there’s an unmistakable, impressive
pencils (fabricated out of resin) and cosmetics; the makeup serves as elegance here. For all its fl amboyance, harlequinade and pierroting, Black
a drawing medium, but the containers and brand names are also used. Marks is a study in formalist rigour and thematic restraint.
Where Nightscape is allusive and delicate, the bronze Clown Medallions Susannah Thompson
one.lintwo.linnine.lin ARTREVIEW
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