Sorcha Dallas

The Metal Bridge brings together four artists working across a range of disciplines. The show is divided into two parts, with the ‘bridging’ of materials being both a literal and a metaphorical vehicle used for the exploration of ideas.

In the first gallery space Steven Claydon exhibits alongside Craig Mulholland. Claydon is drawn to the often-overlooked moments in history where art interfaces with politics. His paintings include references to Vorticism, with his sculptures and posters referring to monuments and memorials from the turn of the last century. His work has a faux-antiquated feel, often with the artist deliberately attempting to distress the works, imbuing them with their own sense of history. Craig Mulholland makes intricate large-scale installations composed of many material parts. For The Metal Bridge Mulholland will show a small-scale set up which refers to the large-scale history paintings of the French salon, particularly those that focus on the physical mechanics of human struggle or violent revolution, usually set against the crumbling architectures of authority.

The second space brings together the work of Thomas Helbig and Duncan Marquiss. Helbig makes drawings, paintings and sculptures. The sculptural works are made from cheap, disposable objects which he shatters and saws, transforming them into hybrids. The violent gestural application of paint onto their surfaces seems to extend into the two-dimensional works, from which grow a sort of powerful beauty. The works have a mythological sense about them, of the artist letting himself go and allowing the psychic energies that govern him to find their forms, their precise and authentic expression. This last statement could also be applied to the work of Duncan Marquiss. Marquiss makes drawings and films which are mesmerizing in their presence and enchanting in their beauty, yet beneath them lies an altogether darker subtext. Marquiss often reverts to an iconography of the lycanthrope, the symbolic transformation of man into animal, and through it the becoming or return to a base and sublime state of raw drives and concerns.

Recent exhibitions by Steven Claydon include a solo statement at Art Basel, a solo show at White Columns, New York and ‘Rings of Saturn’ at Tate Modern, all 2006. Claydon lives and works in London and is represented by Hotel, London. Recent exhibitions by Craig Mulholland include ‘RFID’, Changing Rooms, Stirling and Whitechapel Project Space, London, both 2005. Mulholland was a recent recipient of the Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award. Mulholland lives and works in Glasgow and is represented by Sorcha Dallas. Recent exhibitions by Thomas Helbig include the solo show ‘Last World’ at Bortolami Dayan, New York and the group show ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’ at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens, both 2006. Helbig lives and works in Berlin and is represented by Guido W.Baudach, Berlin. Duncan Marquiss will have a forthcoming solo show at The Changing Rooms, Stirling in 2007 and was a recent recipient of the Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award. He lives and works in Glasgow and is represented by Dicksmith Gallery, London.