Rachel Adams & Katharina Kiebacher

The candidly coquettish forms sprinkled across the Collective Gallery’s central space are a misleading harbinger of the arduous, military video installations they precede. The relationship between the final showcasing artists in 2009’s New Work Scotland Programme, Rachel Adams and Katharina Kiebacher, is inherently dialectic; Adams’s playful innovations question the controlled stasis of Kiebacher’s operational films whilst the latter’s austerity renders the former's 1970s trajectories comparatively frivolous, occasionally vacuous. The pairing fails to produce the harmonious duet the intimate gallery presented through the tactile painting style of NWSP predecessors, Michael White and Anna Tanner. However, the cacophonous, jarring vestiges of their attempt proves equally successful in captivating the viewer.

The tasselled fringes, mop-like heads and spindly metal legs of Adams’s figures, Golden Years, are explicitly anthropomorphic. Their constant exposure to the street through the floor length windows of the gallery only heightens such a suggestion. Like rare creatures held in captivity, they are forced to project their unique forms to satisfy the viewer’s curiosity. Above them dances Retroscoping, a floating, mouth-piece animation derived directly from the aesthetic of Bowie’s music video Life on Mars? Traced from the singer’s lips as he mouths his song, the abstracted ‘O’ shape subsequently transcribed has an endless ream of connotations; onomatopoeic, figurative or simply the written translation of the singer’s ‘oos.’ Brought together within one room the space resembles something in between a kitsch 1970s department store and a contemporary nod to the theatricality of minimalist sculpture born from the same period.

Those well acquainted with the NWSP will find it impossible not to draw a comparison between Adams and White’s use of this central arena. The pastel hues of White’s maladroit forms still scar the concrete floors of the space; ashes that cannot be washed away despite Adam’s inheritance of the room. Adams’s lexicon overlaps into White’s with both artists sharing a passion for audacious form and experimentation. One must question whether a partnership between these two artists participating in the NWSP has been overlooked?

Adams and her counterpart Kiebacher experience few overlaps. Where Adams offers instantaneous visual sensations Kiebacher demands contemplation as a process slowly unfolds within her stygian space. Seven videos play on a continuous loop; each recording frustratingly stale training regimes for various disasters. There is an emphasis upon procedure, a uniformed control which juxtaposes the chaotic nature of the catastrophes being prepared for. Actions seem stunted, a microcosm of the videos themselves which move towards a climax which is never attained. Both are dissatisfactory to view; the actions in themselves appear inadequate whilst Kiebacher’s rudimentary filming, framing them as performance pieces, are draining.

It is most likely Kiebacher’s intention to present these works in such a mundane fashion however. Through distilling all drama from her work she challenges the impending sense of crisis which haunts humanity, presenting it instead as equally futile.

Once again the Collective gallery has been judicious in its selection process. The current exhibition of Rachel Adams and Katharina Kiebacher’s art, although small, offers an insightful glimpse into the early workings of their practise and demonstrates successfully the talent and potential of students currently graduating from Scottish art colleges.