Art: Divinity from domesticity

Corin Sworn: The Lens Prism

****

Tramway, Glasgow

Richard Wright

The Modern Institute, Glasgow

***

RARELY, if ever, has Tramway 2 contained so many objects that shine. But all that glistens is not gold, sometimes it is a mass of stainless steel cooking utensils.

These objects, in everyday use in millions of Indian homes, are one of the main raw materials used by New Delhi-based artist Subodh Gupta, an artist with a growing international reputation. Having made a skull from kitchen utensils, which was shown at the Venice Biennale, he earned the moniker "the Damien Hirst of Delhi".

We see little Indian contemporary art in this country, and to the Western eye it is so direct one wonders if one has missed something. The largest work here, after which the show is titled, is a wall-mounted rack of stainless steel cooking pots, beakers, lunchboxes and serving spoons, painstakingly arranged, stretching almost the full length of Tramway 2. Removed from their original context, they convey the idea of human presence on a large scale. Get to grips - if you can - with the scale of India's population growth.

Incubate is a clutch of giant eggs, also made from cooking utensils, which seem to cluster under a glittery chandelier. This work seems to speak of nascent economies, growing fast, and perhaps of old class divisions which could soon be overwhelmed by new growth.

Terminal is a collection of shiny brass finials, spires that decorate temple roofs, carrying the insignia of the relevant god. Here, robbed of such insignia and placed on the ground, they become intriguing as objects, clustering in family groups, linked together by a maze of string. Gupta is interested in how secular objects can be sacred, and sacred ones secular, even as India melds ancient religious traditions with a modern secular sensibility.

The simplest of the works here is a huge stainless steel thali pan, turned on its end to become a mirror. In it we see reflected all the other glittering works in the exhibition, and we see ourselves. There is something powerful and direct about this. The plate, like all the other utensils, is empty. We see ourselves, for the most part well-fed westerners, while Gupta reminds us that much of the world is still hungry.

Corin Sworn's film is as complex as Gupta's works are straightforward. Sworn, a Canadian who recently graduated from Glasgow School of Art's MFA course has made a film that probes notions of memory and history.The Lens Prism features actor David Allister performing a collage of texts inside the cavernous performance space of Tramway 1.

It circles the theme of great exhibitions, staged celebrations of the greatness of Britain and its empire, attempting to lay their own gloss over the past. But it also draws on other works - Raymond Roussel's tangential poem New Impressions of Africa, Chris Marker's 1962 film La jete - and on the conundrums of memory, how often we find that our memories are inaccurate.

To this, add further layers: conventions of film and theatre, both arts of the unreal, and ourselves as viewers, with our own readings and misreadings. Though Sworn's concerns are complex and theoretical, a well written text and a fine actor help to create a poetic and engaging. work.

Richard Wright is an artist both straightforward and complex, full of both craftsmanship and rigorous ideas, as his first solo show since winning the Turner Prize last year demonstrates. Wright's wall-paintings always speak directly to context, and his main work consists of a trompe l'oeil pattern of half-diamonds or arrowheads on the gable wall of the gallery.

Close up, the eye is drawn to the disruptions in the pattern, occasional changes in direction. From further back, geometry plays with perspective, pulling the eye towards the centre of the wall, as if it recedes into the distance, and perhaps opens into elsewhere.

This work - very different from the gold mural he created for the Turner Prize, or the stars in the Stairwell Project this summer in the Dean Gallery - reminds us how Wright takes on particular spaces and makes us consider them afresh. In the Modern Institute, he draws us to look along the length of the room - making it seem much longer than it is - while reminding us that the whole space is a vertical arrowhead.

With all this to think about, it is easy to miss the second wall painting, blossoming high up in the shadow of one of the beams. Wright's work has a way of making us into participants - we have to do the noticing. Looking is an event, we must not put it off till later. Soon, these wall paintings will be painted over. Catch them before it's too late.

• Subodh Gupta until 12 December; Corin Sworn run ended; Richard Wright until 23 October