Precipitous City, bound : unbound
Upright Gallery, Edinburgh, 16 August-6 September 2019
The Upright Gallery is a tiny independent exhibition space, set up by Ian Farmer in April 2017, who also runs a graphic design business from the premises. His curatorial policy is driven by his personal predilections – support for newly qualified artists, work that carries a sense of integrity, sometimes with an element of social commentary and often with a strong narrative thread.
The show takes as its starting point an extract by Robert Louis Stevenson from 1878 in which he describes the city of Edinburgh: ‘From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide . . .’ It is a collaboration between five Edinburgh-based book artists comprising Felicity Bristow, Liza Green, Susie Leiper, Lynda Wilson and Susie Wilson, known collectively as ‘bound : unbound’ (note the lower case).
Each artist has responded to the city in their own particular way and using a range of media – printmaking, textiles, calligraphy and painting. Although text was the inspiration for the show, the result is highly visual, with ‘books’ being by no means the only object-type on display.
This is consistent with the ‘unbound’ part of the group, which has been in existence since 2014 when they were selected for the Hidden Door Festival which took place in the disused vaults below Waverley Station, although the group’s title only came into being in 2017.
I particularly enjoyed a collagraph print by Liza Green, ’10 to Tollcross’, with its pale greys and small points of red emphasis and which appears to be inspired by an aerial view of this particular area of the city, while the book format is given a unique twist by Felicity Bristow, whose ‘Ticket collector’ is a concertina booklet made up of used train tickets.
But perhaps the most satisfying contributions are those by Susie Leiper, who manages to combine a painterly approach with skilful calligraphy. Text is present in most of her work, although so successfully integrated into the overall image that it frequently requires careful study in order to be decoded.
This is particularly difficult to achieve as the linear nature of calligraphy often sits at odds with the tonal properties of painting, the two forms representing different grammar types. On the other hand, Leiper’s use of the brush and graphite, or lettering using colours that blend with the background, help to soften the texture of the writing and thus achieve a consistent tonal range.
The blending of form and content is particularly successful in ‘Sic itur ad astra, this way to the stars’ (oil, casein paint, metallic papers, silverpoint and graphite on wood). This is based around an article written by G.K. Chesterton for the Daily News in 1905 where he talks of the abruptness of Edinburgh, and that ‘it seems like a city built on precipices: a perilous city.’ ‘Sic itur ad astra’ is the motto that was carved or painted on the Canongate, suggesting that Edinburgh is ‘this way to the stars’.
Leiper brings together her Chinese influences with a direct reflection on ‘Elephant Hill – Arthur’s Seat’ (oil and Dr Martens white on board, bound as a concertina book). The text in this piece comes from Chiang Yee’s A Silent Traveller in Edinburgh, one of a number of highly educated Chinese who travelled around the UK in the 1940s.
One side of the book is left text-free – an image of Arthur’s Seat in all its greenery. The other side has a bluer effect, with spontaneously written text extracts placed so as to reflect clouds perhaps – the handwriting style suggestive of the author’s personal impressions.
These are exquisite objects – not only to look at, but happily to hold and to feel.