The New Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen review - 'a rat is reimagined as the protagonist of a punk utopia'

For the New Aberdeen Bestiary exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery, seven artists have made new print work inspired by a medieval bestiary in the Aberdeen University collection, writes Susan Mansfield

The New Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen Art Gallery ***

These days, the arts feels like a hand-to-mouth survival economy, so milestone birthdays feel like significant achievements. Aberdeen’s Peacock & the Worm (previously Peacock Printmakers, then Peacock Visual Arts) turned 50 in June, marking the date with a series of exhibitions and events, from a civic reception in the Town Hall to a two-day show by David Bellingham in a set of restored Victorian public toilets.

At the reception, Peacock director Nuno Sacramento pledged an increasing public presence for the organisation, and that’s certainly true at the moment with three exhibitions continuing across the city, and a further show at Drum Castle on Deeside.

Installation view of The New Aberdeen Bestiary

Aberdeen Art Gallery is hosting The New Aberdeen Bestiary, for which Peacock commissioned seven artists over three years to make new print work inspired by a medieval bestiary in the Aberdeen University collection. The result is a showcase of contemporary printmaking woven into an installation with Carla Filipe’s lizard skin screenprints making a kind of wallpaper.

Responding to the marginalia in the original manuscript, the artists have made a kind of celebration of marginality. Three of them have an interest in travelling communities: Delaine Le Bas, on the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize, who presents a reworking of the symbolism of the Medusa; French artist Joy Charpentier, who reimagines the rat as the protagonist of a punk utopia, and Pedro G. Romero, whose work is part text, a freewheeling wander through ideas, places and history.

Madrid-based Julio Jara has made a series of arresting images using donkey masks in collaboration with the residents of the homeless shelter where he works, British-Nigerian Abdulrazaq Awofeso recalls the cockerel which used to wake him every morning in his Nigeria childhood, and Aberdeen-based Sadie Main takes on the unicorn and its role as the national animal of Scotland.

Until 5 January