PURL

Recently when writing an essay, I came across a section in a book about the DIY/Lo-Fi/Relational art of the 1990s and its trickle-down effect into contemporary art schools. This came to mind at PURL, an exhibition of inter-media art by third year inter-media students from the Edinburgh College of Art.

Relational art, which came to prominence in the 1990s, is art conceptually divorced from the contemplative and formal modes of Modernism. It sought to create new spaces of sociability within a gallery, believing that if there were physical objects involved they would provide a conduit for something else to happen.

Such is the trickle-down effect that PURL is only left with the objects and materials of said art practices. The sustenance of this approach to work (interactivity, utility, sociability et al) has evaporated in its process of diffusion from the galleries to the art schools, leaving nothing else to contemplate but objects in a straight-up aesthetical way. Their castration from relational utility warrants the pieces to be deprived of a privileged role in a gallery situation, but PURL’s little converted copy shop/gallery on the Cowgate is full of them.

Inside lies a cassette recorder/player circa mid-nineties, a piece of wood roughly the height of the gallery ceiling, a piece of white cloth draped over a line of string, a ground plan of some buildings, and some small sculptural counting numbers on the floor. Within their weird situation the objects look for a visual and sensory reaction but it is impossible for the viewer to oblige them.

The aforementioned trickle-down effect is the best way to rationalise the inevitable discomfort one experiences at the exhibition, but at least that's better than simply not being sharp enough to get something from the work.