ART: Pop-Up is Not Just for Kids

Establishing a Pop-Up shop is becoming practically de rigeur for any go-getting hipster in the worlds of art, fashion or design. I like to think I was, quite uncharacteristically, an early leader of the field after the blinding success of the four-week Festival art shock that was Mullet, an exhibition I set up with art school friends in an empty Edinburgh shop back in 1999. To the best of my knowledge, the term 'Pop-Up', still referred to a 3D kids’ book in those distant days, but the principle was the same as now: invade a space for a brief period and fill it with creative energy.

In the case of Mullet that energy was possibly as destructive as it was creative: our little band of teenage paint fiends adorned the walls of what had been a perfectly serviceable shop with vast murals; removed all shelving that would inhibit the hanging of canvases; and, as I recall, painted a twisted version of the Basque flag the length of the steps. God knows why. None of this we painted over or replaced on leaving and how the owner ever forgave us and why he didn't sue us are things I'll never know. (He even bought a picture from me, so perhaps he was just a genuinely benevolent soul who liked spray paint.) The site has been on and off the letting market ever since.

Nowadays the Pop-Up scene is much more polished. The temporary emporiums are often spin-offs from established businesses and proper grown up artists. Edinburgh is proving to be the place to find some of the best of these blink-and-they're-gone phenomena. I was lucky to be involved in one of them last year: Go Reborn.

This event was set up in a redeveloped nightclub. What had once been the beery, black floors of The Venue was transformed into a sleek, light-filled, open plan space (with enviable views over Waverley Station to the Castle one way and to Arthur's Seat the other). The space was due to be let as an open plan office but before the suits moved in came the skinny jeans. Designer Jaco Justice (who had been involved with Mullet back in the day and presumably learned what not to do there) teamed up with Godiva boutique owner Fleur MacIntosh to bring about a month-long open art space project. Painters, such as me, were invited to use the space as a studio; art and clothes were sold; words were written and films shot. And then it disappeared.

But in fact Go Reborn only went back underground. The powers behind it continued to work on the concept and it has since re-emerged for a couple more forays into the light. The most recent of these was last weekend, when the team took over the Such and Such gallery space off Leith Walk to host a weekend-long shop and publicity drive, highlighting their new web magazine, and showcasing new writing from the likes of novelist Sophie Cooke and poet AF Giles, as well as presenting fashion design and photography.

Just around the corner from the latest Go Reborn venue, the acclaimed South African artist Jonathan Freemantle was doing a Pop-Up show of his own, ambitiously titled Divina Proportione. He'd moved into the Old Ambulance Depot on Brunswick Street, a fabulous warehousey space with a vaulted wooden roof and big white walls. It's an ideal spot for an exhibition, and particularly well suited to the kind of cerebral abstract paintings Freemantle produces.

The work in this show was based on an interesting concept: the artist gave a 24-exposure disposable camera to each of two writers with instructions to shoot off the film at random, without giving much thought to composition or subject. One of them, Alex Renton, was heading to Haiti to document the aftermath of the earthquake, while the other, James Fergusson, was going to Afghanistan.

Freemantle took the resultant photos and found within them 'their essential internal geometry', which he then used as a basis for a series of small abstract collages, some of which are presented here with the source photo above them. These were, in turn, used to create the large square canvases that form the body of the exhibition.

In each, he is following an obsession with geometry and striving to nail the golden ratio every time. The end product is something that, in the words of the artist, is 'an amalgam of my response to the photograph, the distilled geometry and golden ratio, and to an abstract inner feeling.' Frankly, for all the viewer knows, it could be a response to a bus trip to Leith.

Is that a problem? The paintings are still attractive pieces, vigorous, lively and painterly, and there is an undeniably pleasing compositional structure to the abstractions. However, I wonder if the same, or very similar, paintings could have come out of any source material, so removed from it have they become. Freemantle admits as much when he says they are 'as much about the present moment when they are being painted in my studio as they are about their genesis on a dusty road in Afghanistan or Haiti'. All of which rather raises the question: what's the point of taking such an interesting catalyst and then completely discarding it along the way? The importance of the concept becomes lost in translation to the canvas, which may be the point, but it means the exhibition as a whole was somewhat schismatic: one part idea to two parts practice.

I enjoyed Freemantle's show nevertheless, not least because I find the Pop-Up gallery concept exciting and refreshing, and the work of this thoughtful artist is without doubt worth seeing without any traditional gallery constraints. Along with its brother, Go Reborn, along the block, this show was evidence that the Pop-Up world is, emphatically, a place for serious art and creative freedom.

I'm not sure where else in Edinburgh Freemantle would have had the opportunity to mount an exhibition like this, despite his impressive international pedigree, as many commercial galleries seem quite resistant to the charms of the wholly abstract painter. Divina Proportione and Go Reborn are now over. Such is the nature of Pop-Up. But I'm looking forward to seeing what the next batch of ephemeral art events can bring to the city.

Go Reborn photo credit: Jaco Justice
Painting: The Golden Section, oil on canvas, 127 x 127 cm, Jonathan Freemantle

ShareThis