Edinburgh Art Festival Roundup 2 David Mach makes one hell of a shop window. Actually not hell exactly – that’s on the second floor – but a jagged, silent scream of a coat-hanger crucifixion. The three giant metal figures in the City Art Centre’s windows are horrific, but in a painstakingly neat, Mach-like way. The other four floors of the gallery are filled with larger-than-life collages, like epic scenes from Hollywood blockbusters, mostly of the action thriller variety. The Plague of Frogs rains down on modern Belfast along with cutlery, chairs, and household debris of every kind. Noah builds his ark on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, while ladies in wellies wrestle with snakes, and kids on bikes run from charging bison. There are veritable casts of millions in every frame. Classic bible stories are set in modern-day cities around the world, with great plausibility. The collages, brought together from thousands of magazine clippings, are so spatially sophisticated that our imaginations are happy to run with Mach’s peculiar visions. The two Towers of Babel pictures are particularly enthralling visual mash-ups, creating entirely new cityscapes out of streets and houses of every kind. These are not images of subtlety; Mach, big and brash as ever, addresses the bible stories just as he remembers them from his schooldays. His preference is for the blood and guts. Heaven fails to ring true, while hell is too awful to look at. The little children are not spared. Not being a fan of horror, or hellfire, I derive no satisfaction from these images, except to admire their technical brilliance. It’s an atmosphere of an altogether different kind at Talbot Rice, where German artist Anton Henning has made of the gallery a gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art. A soft carpet, easy-listening piano music and cheerfully-coloured walls set the scene for a comfortable show-room experience. The art itself continues the theme: quasi-cubist, quasi-18th century, quasi-many things. Modernist design, kitsch naked ladies, lustrous curving sculpture and appealing abstract painting all point to one thing: commodification. Even the dark memento mori complete with skull; even the old wooden saint with plastic snake, are offered for our delectation. They are presented on a par with the sunbathing females, the brushwork lazy and unrefined. The whole is a vaguely sensual experience, finely-tuned to guarantee shallowness. Amusing, but inevitably forgettable. A little out of town at Jupiter Artland lie the unforgettable landforms of Charles Jencks, their sculpted grassy mounds spiralling around you like whirlwinds slowed to a stop. A temporary exhibition offers some clues to Jencks’s complex thinking, which draws together a unique mix of architectural theory, biology and astronomy. Jencks tries out his new ideas on small Metaphysical Landscapes; lumps of rock combined with wires, meshes, crystals, even perfume bottles. The sculptures strike a harmonious balance between natural design, such as the self-organising liesegang rock which fascinates the artist, and desert rose, a rock which seems to flower; and cultural reference points such as classical busts and constructivist sculpture. They are things of beauty and objects of fascination. And in that quirky Jencks-like way, warmth and humour abound. Take the beasties, and the little eggs, and the wry self-portrait, recognisable only from his distinctive long scarf. It may leave you slightly baffled, but Jencks’s art always welcomes you in with open arms.
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