with Katri Walker

In Transit is an exhibition that brings together a body of recent videos by Dani Marti and Katri Walker. As the title indicates, all of the works were made while the artists were either on the move through unfamiliar places or, as in the case of Marti’s Under the Coolabah Tree, 2008, stranded in one for an extended period of time. Consequently a salient feature of the works by both artists in the exhibition is a preoccupation with the transient gaze, demonstrated through a critical engagement within and against the formal conventions of documentary.

Working closely with the characters they depict in hours of un-staged footage, Marti and Walker create what they call ‘portraits’ from the simple unfolding of observed quotidian events. Both artists insist that these portraits cannot be planned, as they are the product of a state of uprootedness. Perhaps the disquietude evoked by many of the works begins with this lack of fixity, inextricably linked as it is to the origins of their making.

Marti comes to the medium of video from the more anchored processes of weaving. This more tangible part of his practice runs parallel to his current video work and is similarly developed through a fixation with the challenges of portraiture today. From a distance, his often large-scaled weavings project a cool aesthetic, inviting associations to Early Minimalism, but upon closer scrutiny, their surfaces both literally and allegorically reveal clues about the characters he portrays. To create these surfaces, Marti uses unconventional materials from pearl and feather to crystal and sausages.

David, 2006, (3) is an early work in Marti’s video trajectory that was triggered by the need to exceed what he was able to portray in his woven pieces. I suspect that it was motivated by his desire for a portraiture that could go beyond surface and the implicit associations of the materials woven. So David cuts deep—uncomfortably deep—as the portrait of a teenager on the wet streets of Glasgow, struggling to maintain consciousness, faltering with a chewed-up begging cup. The work impacts not only because its subject’s position is disadvantaged, but also because of the way in which Marti presents him to us as the viewer. Where the viewer might become absorbed in the refined surface of a weaving, the image of David is thrown at him unapologetically. The gaze that we cannot refuse him exploits him. I will return to this gaze in a moment.

extract catalogue text by Lois Rowe

• Lois Rowe, ‘In Transit’, Glasgow International

Video links:

• David, 2007
• El Zorro, 2007
• Under the collabah tree,2008

Reviews:

• Laura McLean-Ferris, ‘Glasgow International Festival’, Art Review Magazine, June 2008, pp140-14
• Martin Vincent, ‘Glasgow International’ Frieze, issue 116, June 2008, page 237
• Martin Vincent, ‘Dani Marti & Katri Walker’, METRO, page 27, 21 April 2008, Scotland
• Sharon Mangion, ‘Glasgow International of Contemporary Art’, AN: The Artists Information Company, 26 April 2008, UK
• Adrian Searle, ‘What a Riot’, The Guardian – G2 ARTS, page 23-25, 15 April 2008, UK
• Laura Cumming, ‘Glasgow makes a show of itself’, The Observer, Review, page 18, 20 April 2008, UK