Glasgow International review β so how many art critics can you fit in an Opel?
This yearβs biennial takes you up tenement staircases and into city centre car parks to see fine work from Delaine Le Bas, Cathy Wilkes and Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Itβs a dreich β as they like to say in these parts β afternoon in June. Four strangers are crammed into an Opel in a city centre car park, listening to the radio. A broadcast of field recordings and vocal fragments is punctuated with bleeps and static. It is a very Glasgow International (GI) experience. In this biennial, art leads you up tenement staircases, across industrial estates, through community gardens and into car parks.
The broadcast is an homage to Jean Cocteauβs film Orpheus, and composed by students in Dresden and Glasgow under the tutelage of Susan Philipsz. This most private of public listening experiences recasts you as Orpheus himself, scrutinising transmissions for hidden meaning. But as Eurydice tells him: βYou canβt spend your life in a talking car.β Other delights await.
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