Shock of the new at gallery shake-up to mark 50 years

Published on Friday 27 November 2009 21:39

A BLOCK of frozen blue ink slowly melting on to the stone floor, modernist metallic five-metre-tall trees, and an exploded cello caught in clear plastic.

• Dan Flavin's Monument has been given a room to itself after the SNGMA rehang. Picture: Neil Hanna

The shock of the new was back in the spectacular 50th anniversary overhaul of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, unveiled yesterday.

Stung by complaints about the lack of a permanent space for the Scottish Colourist painters, staff revealed that 20 of their works from its collection will get a new showcase next spring.

"The Intimate Colourists" will feature small, rarely seen oil paintings. New exhibitions on individual painters, FCB Cadell and JD Fergusson, are scheduled.

But there were no apologies for the new look yesterday. The Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed, and other leading Scottish artists converged on Edinburgh last night for the unveiling of the sweeping "rehang" of the SNGMA, its first for 25 years.

Without change, "it would be a monument that was lifeless", said Simon Groom, the National Galleries' director for modern and contemporary art.

He called the rehang a "perpetual revolution… a new beginning, not about throwing out old art but new ways of experiencing it".

The ink from the icy, untitled work by Kitty Kraus, melted by a lit bulb, will dry on the floor where it has spread. It is also showing in the New York Guggenheim Museum.

Another new work is Picasso's striking 1969 work Seated Nude, a long-term loan by a European collector.

The gallery's new look, entitled What You See is Where You're At, launches changing displays that will roll out through 2010 in a "permanent revolution", said Mr Groom. Works by different artists are mixed in rooms entitled "Things" or "White".

Scottish artist Callum Innes, who selected works for two rooms, has loaned items from his collection. "Galleries that remain static are not so interesting," he said. "People moan that they don't change."

Electric Trees and Telephone Booth Conversations, by Scottish artist Martin Boyce, a stylised urban landscape of a playground, giant metallic trees, and graffiti, was installed with scaffolding and lifts.

Other works, such as Cello in Space, by the French artist Arnan, have been in store for years. Many were bought under the gallery's legendary first keeper, Douglas Hall, known for his knack for spotting rising artists.

The Colourists' paintings on show are placed alongside famous contemporaries, with a work by JD Fergusson facing one by Matisse. SJ Peploe's Black Bottle hangs in a Still Life room, with works by the French painter Georges Braque, and English abstract artist Ben Nicholson.

The last room on the top floor is turned over entirely to Monument by the US artist Dan Flavin – made from fluorescent light tubes.

After works by Picasso, or the new White room, "hopefully that should make absolute sense about why it's there, and why it's art", Mr Groom said.

It's great to see where we're at, but how we got here matters

"EVERYTHING is going to be alright" reads the neon text by Martin Creed emblazoned on the front portico of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA). Shining across at it is Nathan Coley's sombre counter-argument: "There will be no miracles here."

The SNGMA rehang has a ballsy, unapologetic title: "What you see is where you're at". For the first time in years, the entire gallery is being used to showcase the permanent collection, and there was no problem filling it.

The issue is how to arrange the work, the same question faced by Tate Modern during its recent rehang. The SNGMA curators have forsaken chronology for rooms dedicated to theme and artistic medium, punctuated by showcases for individual artists such as Dan Flavin and Martin Boyce.

At times, it's confusing. We see Beckmann and Lger reacting to abstraction long before we see abstraction itself. The Still Life room leans heavily on pre-20th century work. But the benefit of this approach is to see how one work leads to another, how artists both learn from and react against their forebears.

Perhaps inevitably, it's patchy. Surrealism and expressionism are under-represented. Conceptualism pops up here and there, but without much coherence. There is only one film (Luke Fowler's Bogman Palmjaguar). The main abstract part of the collection is kept back until the final group of rooms.

But this is a show for people who want to learn about modern art, how some traditions have continued and others have been overturned, about what happens when art asks questions of itself for 100 years. No miracles, perhaps, but it just might be alright.

SUSAN MANSFIELD