Finding the beauty in simplicity of form

Published on Tuesday 12 February 2008 18:56

Minimalism done well is rare, but in a major show in Dundee, Glasgow-trained Norwegian Camilla Løw shows solid foundations to SUSAN MANSFIELD

WHEN I visited Dundee Contemporary Arts last month, I was taken to visit a production line in the basement. The gallery assistants were making dozens of cement cubes, working to the specifications of sculptor Camilla Lw, who was soon to have a one-person show in the gallery.

By the time of my next visit, Lw was installing her work, and 130 cement cubes were being moved carefully on pallets (cement is surprisingly fragile round the edges). A petite figure with a neat red bob and a yellow T-shirt, she moved among them, stacking them as plinths for her sculptures.

Minimalism is rare these days; minimalism that works even rarer. You need a lot of confidence to keep it simple, to know when a thing is complete. It is this quality that has made Lw, 32, who studied at Glasgow School of Art, one of the most highly acclaimed sculptors of her generation.

Last November, she was awarded the Statoil Prize in her native Norway, the country's most prestigious award for emerging artists. The prize of around 45,000 is awarded over three years. Lw, who is a master of understatement, says that it has given her "a little bit more economic freedom".

This is her first show in the UK in a publicly funded space, and is also the biggest space she has ever worked in. "It could feel daunting, but it's nice. A lot of the work I make is about the space around it as much as the works itself. A big space gives you much more chance to play with that."

It's also an important show for DCA, the first to be programmed by the building's new curatorial team, Judith Winter, formerly with the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), and Graham Domke, who was at Inverleith House. A major show by a young Scottish-trained artist is a confident statement about the future.

Lw came to Glasgow to specialise in sculpture (most Scandinavian art courses are more open-ended) and because she loved the city's music scene. "I was ready to leave Norway and London felt too big; Glasgow was a similar size to Oslo. I listened to a lot of music that came out of there and I assumed that there would be good art where there was good music. And I was right!"

Her work tends to be discussed in terms of two historical movements: the 1960s minimalism of Donald Judd and his ilk, and Russian constructivism. Lw doesn't deny these influences but is cautious about comparisons. "Seeing the work in this time and era is a different thing from what it would have been when it was made. The quality of the material or the aesthetic is what I'm interested in, rather than the politics.

"As much as I'm influenced by the past, I'm influenced by people who are alive and working now, seeing great shows by fresh people with a lot of energy. If you work in a city with a lot of amazing artists to inspire you, you develop through being part of a strong group of people."

The DCA show will bring together new work which has never been shown before with work from the previous five years. There is a visual unity to it. Lw hit a mature style early and doesn't go in for sudden changes. The sculptures, typically made using thin strips of wood or pieces of Perspex, have a human scale. When Lw stands among them to be photographed, she almost becomes one of them.

"It's important that the work is human-sized, it's in relationship to the viewer. Even the bigger hanging pieces, I can imagine picking them up. No material is bigger than you can grasp. Even the blocks are a weight I can lift myself, although I've been finding them a bit hard!"

People writing about Lw's work have a tendency to anthropomorphise it, to see the lines as gestures or figures: a raised eyebrow, a cupped hand; a nonchalant figure leaning against a wall; a dancer in repose. Lw doesn't see them that way, but she does say the cluster of new works standing in a group "like Giacomo Balla's Futurist Flowers" are "the most figurative things I've ever made".

She draws her ideas widely from fashion, pop culture, art history, the books she reads. The title of the show, Straight Letters, is a reference to pichacao, the vertical, rune-like graffiti found in So Paolo, Brazil.

"It is very different from typical American-style graffiti, because it's all about straight lines. It's inspired by 1970s and 1980s heavy-metal record sleeves and Northern mythology. It's found very high up on buildings, it's very much related to what the body can do, standing on a window sill quite high up painting with a ruler.

"I'm also interest in the way that fragmented things from Europe are brought to So Paolo, and then in turn people from Europe are inspired by that, the fact that the ideas are in flux and cross national boundaries."

In terms of how the works get made, it's all down to balance. "If I make a sculpture that's really tall, I might need one that's really small. If there's one that's very square, I want to make one which is narrow. Or if I do one that's very colourful, I'll do one that's monochrome."

Concrete is a new addition to her repertoire; it's all to do with balance: many of her sculptures have a fragility or transparency, concrete is the opposite of that. "The work was a series of light frames so it was natural to bring in something heavy. The cubes relate to Brancusi: what is the work and what is the plinth?"

Lw is now back in Norway. "I really loved Glasgow. I didn't leave because I wanted to leave, but it's nice to go somewhere else, it refreshes your view. I left an amazing workshop at Glasgow Sculpture Studios. I have a smaller place now, it restricts me, but it makes me think in different ways."

&#149 Camilla Lw: Straight Letters is at Dundee Contemporary Arts until 31 March.