David Batchelor @ Talbot Rice Gallery

'Overloaded with pegs, combs, toys, utensils, fly swats, feather dusters, and arranged by colour or function, they create an enticing forest of ordered foliage'

★★★
archive review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 31 Jul 2007
33330 large
115270 original
A rare moment of bright sunshine floods the newly refurbished space of the Talbot Rice Gallery, streaming in through the recently uncovered south facing Georgian windows, illuminating David Batchelor's totems of tack.

In the vast atrium of the gallery the work Parapillars, a collection of towers constructed from unattractive metal supports, blossom with the vivid, artificial colour of bright-plastic pound store staples. Overloaded with pegs, combs, toys, utensils, fly swats, feather dusters, and arranged by colour or function, they create an enticing forest of ordered foliage; the cheap and cheerful fragments transformed into jewel like flourishes.

Unplugged, Batchelor's first major solo show in Scotland is his first ""acoustic"" endeavour. His brightly coloured display has neither the usual stream of cables nor bunches of bulbs, but glows courtesy the now plentiful supply of natural light. Accompanying the new sculptural works is a survey of Batchelor's drawings from the last 10 years. These modest diagrams on discarded sheets of paper are like scribbled lyrics that expose the bare essentials of the compositions and give insight into the artist's creative process.

This colourful collection of Batchelor's work radiates in the new interior of the Talbot Rice, offering a flash of brilliance to raise our spirits in this otherwise bleak summer and is a stunning visual contribution to the 2007 Edinburgh Arts Festival.