Laura Aldridge and Andrew Sim, Edinburgh reviews - 'Jupiter Artland continues to encourage artists to make ambitious work'

These two shows at Jupiter Arltland are big on ambition but lacking in depth, writes Susan Mansfield

Laura Aldridge: Lawnmower, Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh ***

Andrew Sim: two rainbows and a forest of plants and trees, Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh ***

Jupiter Artland continues to offer artists opportunities to make ambitious work in its exhibition spaces as well as in the sculpture park. In the Steading Galleries, brilliantly turned into topsy-turvy nightclub toilets last summer by Lindsey Mendick, Glasgow artist Laura Aldridge has created an immersive installation which includes ceramics, glass, fabric, film and sound.

Work by Laura Aldridge at Jupiter Artland PICL Neil Hanna

The walls are an orangey yellow, the steps replaced with a bright pink ramp. Lighting is low, allowing her beautifully crafted wall-mounted lamps – nests of plant-dyed fabrics with ceramic centres – a chance to shine. There are loveseats which viewers are invited to use, adorned with glass ornaments.

The show foregrounds the sensory over the intellectual response. It’s also highly collaborative: she worked with a textile dyer, a furniture maker and a glass-blower as well as with fellow artists Juliana Capes, Morwenna Kearsley and Sarah McFadyen to make the audio and film.

It’s an invitation to have a sensory experience and see where it takes you, an interior which is, in some way, about interiority. Meanwhile, in the garden, her fountain, through which water rushes and tinkles over a tower of giant ceramic snail shells, both looks and sounds beautiful. You stay for a moment, then you move on. It’s as profound and as ephemeral as that.

In the ballroom, Glasgow artist Andrew Sim – who is now based in New York – presents their largest show in Scotland to date. Sim makes large-scale “paintings” using pastel on canvas, drawing on a personal lexicon of symbols which includes werewolves, rainbows, sunflowers and monkey-puzzle trees.

In this show, yucca plants flower and multi-headed sunflowers dazzle against dark, starry skies. They represent specific plants the artist has encountered, making them points on an autobiographical journey as well as being symbols, though what they are symbolic of we can only guess. They have the kind of flat luminosity which makes one think of children’s books. One picture shows a plaintive looking pink werewolf. Sim has done unicorns too, in the past, though there are none here.

The ballroom, with its spendid rococo-style ceiling, feels like an awkward place for them. One partly blocks a window. The rainbow over the fireplace is deliberately hung too far to the right, messing with the head of anyone of a symmetrical disposition.

Sim’s work offers a stylised take on the natural world which the contemporary art market is currently falling over itself to collect, not unlike the painting of Nicolas Party, who designed Jupiter Artland’s ultra-cool cafe nearby. It’s pleasant enough if you like a bit of ironic naiveté, but if there are hidden depths, they’re kept very well hidden.

Both shows until 29 September.