Elisabeth Mahoney 

Keeping the faith in Dundee

There is no Mountain Then There is Generator, Dundee ****
  
  


Instead of a press release for this group show on the nature of belief, a blank poster. Held against light, it revealed words; the light changed, they disappeared. To believe this heralded a new show at Generator required a minor act of faith - which is exactly what the exhibition consists of. Belief in love, redemption, a pop group; faith in storytelling, angels, filmic special effects: all of these combine to create an engagingly retro look at trust.

Jessica Voorsanger goes wildly secular with a forlorn shrine to Take That, while Mel Carvalho's Angel, a photograph of a shadowy angelic figure, makes you think of Robbie Williams. Kate Gray's backlit photograph, Mission, could also have pop-video roots, but this quiet show-stealer is more meaningful than that. An Edenic image for this digitally manipulated age, two smooth-thighed lovers walk hand in hand through the fields. That they are walking towards a nuclear power station, and wearing disposable plastic pants, disrupts the fantasy. But still they walk, joyfully, towards the end.

Opposite Gray's lovers hangs Paul Carter's dystopian installation, Moses Basket. A huge plastic bubble, it suggests safety, a sanctuary. Inside, though, hangs a lifeless figure, in combat gear studded with quotations from the Bible. The bubble of safety is violently burst: this is a suicidal space, a torturous chamber. In a deadly dialogue with each other, Gray and Carter's work also benefits from an apocalyptic audio backdrop, all Hawkwind space-rock meets Jah Wobble, courtesy of the Family of God.

In a second room, Alan Currall talks through miracles on video, using deliberately antique special effects. Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan's installation - white barbed wire, white trees growing from poor soil, pink fluorescent light - is like a vision of death stolen from a Steve Strange video circa 1982.

As you step out of this powerful show into Generator's industrial estate setting, another miracle is revealed. Bill Clinton is addressing the people of Dundee on a loudspeaker, his rhetorical skill laid bare in the frosty air. His fate pretty much sums up the changing nature of faith this show explores: the US didn't believe him about those "sexual relations", and yet he kept their faith in him.

• Until February 4. Details: 01382 225982.

 

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