Rolling Devolution

Curator Brian McAvera's exhibition brings the works of a score of "cutting edge" artists, ten Irish, ten Scots, to venues both…

Curator Brian McAvera's exhibition brings the works of a score of "cutting edge" artists, ten Irish, ten Scots, to venues both sides of the Celtic Sea as Scotland and Northern Ireland contemplate devolved government. Thus Maoliosa Boyle's cibachrome prints offer modern pastiches of Virgin and Child, whilst Jim Morrison's God and Ulster presents an item of clothing exhibited as Ian Paisley's Underpants in what might be a Masonic display case. Gerry Gleason's acrylic captures a universal shrunken female breast for Ireland's Famine.

Pinning down contemporary Scotland's icons presents greater problems. Yes, Mateus Farenholtz's museum case, with its photograph of an Edwardian Eurasian nurse and broken rolling pin, plays on that other nation's long history of welcoming refugee communities. True, Eileen Ferguson's expressionist oils evoke a borderland riven by lost enterprises. Photographer Craig Mackay's erotic Sisphean Trinity images a people's winged dreams. Yet none of Scotland's selected focus down on their country's ethos as pertinently as Sean Hillen's absurdist photo-montages of an Ireland imploding on its past whilst seeking international acclaim.

Runs till August 28th.