Mouthful Minimalism / Test Cards

The Briggait is pleased to present an exhibition in two parts by Glasgow-based artist, Angus Wolf. The artist has produced two new bodies of work that continue his examination of the relationship between Fine Art and craftsmanship.

Taking influence from Richard Sennet’s The Craftsman, the art/craft dichotomy is examined from the position that craftsmanship is poorly understood if reductively defined merely as manual skill applied to particular materials, and is better defined as the act of doing a job well for its own sake. Wolf’s practice looks to make comparisons between art history and non-traditional crafts, in the case of this exhibition, between high-end cookery and television engineering.

The works in Gallery One evolved from a case study of the relationship between Modernist painting and sculpture and the photographic archive of El Bulli (1972- 86), undoubtedly the most famous and influential Michelin-stared restaurant of its time.

In Gallery Two the artist has produced a series of photographs that document television test cards and illustrate their relationship to geometric abstraction in painting. In 1924 John Logi Baird (of Helensburgh) demonstrated to Radio Times the first working television set. Baird also developed test cards, physical pieces of card adorned with abstract patterns that could be used to calibrate television monitors, to set alignment, tonality, focus, etc. These early test cards read like Suprematist compositions — a simple black cross on a white background, a solitary black circle.