FIRE IN THE WOODS – THE DARK MUSINGS OF DEREK McGUIRE

Submitted by Editor on Mon, 15/10/2012 - 11:45

In the middle of the journey of our life, Derek McGuire has found himself astray in a dark wood where the straight road has been lost.

On the brink of various infernos, the award-winning Edinburgh artist's latest exhibition at the Union Gallery is a disturbing – sometimes menacing, sometimes touching, but often also funny – account of metaphysical choices made for high stakes.

One of two large works in this exhibition, 'At the Skirt of a Wood' is almost impenetrably dark. The slight gloss of the work's surface obscures whatever is being depicted. One must move from side to side, approach and retreat from the painting to make out details. Something akin to dance results, a process in which one almost needs to step into the work to understand better its mysterious suggestions of skulls and smoke, birds of ill omen and crumbling archways. It is a strangely seductive process, reminiscent of other tentative and more morally hazardous toings and froings.

'Dark Flowers of Helios' (above) is easier to interpret visually, certainly beautiful, but similarly strange and worrisome.

Children – McGuire's own – appear repeatedly. In 'Favourite Tracks', a peculiar biped – reminiscent of Rupert Bear's father but possibly an infant silhouetted in a panda hat – plunges into the trees with pet dog. The mundane and the extraordinary are ambiguously merged.

In 'Pirate Tent' (below), a child's play den, flickeringly lit by campfire and obscured by smoke, becomes a metaphor for the imaginative soul-space: an area both creative and sinister in the shadow of the forest.

McGuire, it seems to me, does not try to recapture or relive childhood innocence in these glimpses so much as to observe it with wistful affection, with trepidation at the edge of potential disaster ... adulthood perhaps.

Animals feature prominently in the works as well: nightmares – as in the bolting horse of 'Chasin' Racin' Brain' (below) and the thundering thoroughbreds of 'Demons of Discord'. 'Always Choose Unicorns' suggests a choice between hope and despair, imagination and reality.

I particularly liked the self-sufficient, intimate and peculiar tenderness of McGuire's lovely 'Black Pigs' (below).

More complicated is the mysterious surprise of 'Cows and Moon'. Central to the latter are a punning title and the single look of recognition directed from one beast to the observer. This apparent jokiness and this steady gaze are then undercut by the line of numbered brands on the creatures' haunches. The figures define the cattle according to a system they do not understand or control, one which may ultimately determine the times and places of their extinction. Implicit in the still certainties of this painting is moral activity, the ambiguity of presumptions, the betrayal of trust.

'Yearning to Etch' (below) I enjoyed for its evocation of crumbling grandeur, architecture's decay.

'In the Skin of a Tiger' – particularly in the context of this often dark exhibition focused on threat – I loved for its sudden vivid colour, its celebration of and empathy for dangerous power.

Derek McGuire's 'dark little dramas' are never dull, conventional or comforting. And neither are they simply decodable: they work simultaneously at different levels, not all of which I suspect are open to the unenlightened observer. This mystery contributes to much of their appeal.

His vision walks a narrow, meandering track between horror and beauty, laughter and screams, innocence and adulthood. It makes you jump. It makes you feel. It sets you thinking. AM

[Derek McGuire's Solo Exhibition runs at the Union Gallery (45 Broughton Street) until 11 November.]