A visit to The Modern Institutes new gallery space in Osborne Street, to discuss the work of Glasgow-based artists, Hayley Tompkins and Luke Fowler.
For her latest show, Tompkins will exhibit a floor-based installation including colour photographs, plants, clay objects, watercolour paintings and other collected material. The work’s title, A Piece of Eight, refers to the silver Spanish coin, an early form of currency now often associated with piracy and lawlessness. Tompkins is interested in the cultural value of objects and their mutability. The use of plants and photographs within the work provide a tangible expression of the progression of time and the opportunity to imagine multiple realities.
Tompkins’ new work seeks to reproduce everyday sensory experience; replicating and heightening the visual and physical interactions we have with the world around us. Her work is an attempt to structure the objects, choices and ideas we encounter in our everyday life, and describe the slippage between our imagination, our perceptions and the reality we inhabit.
Also on show is self-with-other by Luke Fowler. The photographic works exhibited are part of Fowler’s ongoing photo archive. For five years, Fowler has been working with a half-frame camera to document his daily life, including events, friends, family and work. Due to the camera’s unusual frame size being obsolete – when printed within a standard 35mm frame – an accidental pairing of two images is created. In the group of works titled All Day Monday and Tuesday, Fowler presents new collages drawing on his photo archive, creating compositions covering an expanded time frame and canvas.
The sound piece Familial Readings by Luke Fowler & Toshiya Tsunoda was part of a work made at the 2008 Yokohama Triennale. Fowler asked his family and close friends to just read out a paragraph from whatever book you’re reading right now. These readings were then incorporated into a soundtrack for a film. A version of this can be heard here at The Modern Institute, and taken away on CD. Toshiya Tsunoda is respected in Japan as a field recording sensei, his work is widely known in the area of experimental music. Luke Fowler and Toshiya Tsunoda have collaborated on works including Composition For Flutter Screen and A Grammar For Listening Part 3.
Luke Fowler is known for his film portraits of socially radical figures; from the avant-garde composer turned political activist Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) to the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing (1927-1989).
