Revolver Part I

Time Out says

Wed Sep 19 2012

This is a three-person group show curated with rare sensitivity. Clearly taking the art works themselves as a starting point, as opposed to some nagging thesis or thematic, it encourages individual encounters with each artist while provoking consideration of their shared resonance – a rich response that remains difficult to unpick. Motioning towards a divergence in approach for the gallery, renowned for its presentation of solo commissions, this is the first in a series of curatorial collaborations between director Robin Klassnik and artist Richard Grayson.

'Klipperty Klöpp' (1984), Andrew Kötting's 16mm film, is vital. The artist is seen ceaselessly jockeying around in a field pretending to be a horse, while a cockney voiceover delivers poetic colloquialisms and mythical prophecy. Seen tracing a physical doodle on the landscape and similarly carving repetitions with his babbling speech, Kötting's humorous work is an absurdist take on the phenomenon of human persistence.

Also looking at recurrent actions, Layla Curtis's film project 'Tong Tana' (2012) features over an hour of footage recorded by hunters from Borneo's Penan tribe. Point-of-view images and binaural recordings create a remarkably immediate experience of the trackers' long solo journeys through the jungle.

Examining the perennial tradition of landscape painting, the collaborative Juneau Projects present 'The Capexagon Series' (2011), an installation of paintings created en plein air using a robotic arm. High-tech and painterly hybrids, these brightly coloured hexagonal canvases remain attached to mechanical-looking mounts. At its most basic, each work in this complex exhibition approaches the relationship between man and the land, while collectively they come to address ideas of persistence and endurance.