No Fixed Points is a curious ex­hib­i­tion.

First, John Cage and Merce Cun­n­ing­ham are not well known as visual artists, but as the pree­m­in­ent composer and cho­reo­graph­er­ of their gen­er­a­tion.

Second, this is not quite an ex­hib­i­tion in the usual sense, but a shifting series of shows, flowing from one dominated by Cage, to one dominated by Cun­n­ing­ham.

As the show pro­gresses, Cage’s paintings will be replaced by Cun­n­ing­ham’s drawings, the timing and sequence of re­place­ment de­ter­m­ined by chance - Cun­n­ing­ham rolled dice in response to questions put to him by the staff of In­ver­leith House, with the numbers rolled cor­res­pond­ing to different works.

This is an eloquent cur­at­or­i­al gambit, one that ef­fect­ively turns the ex­hib­i­tion into a work in and of itself, and, too, an essay on the closely linked practices of the two artists.

The show’s title is taken from Albert Einstein’s maxim that ‘there are no fixed points in space’, a phrase which inspired Cun­n­ing­ham to re­volu­tion­ise his practice as a cho­reo­graph­er­, first de­vel­op­ing a number of dance phrases, then using tossed coins and cast dice to determine their ordering, the number of re­pe­ti­tions and the placement of dancers on the stage. The technique was refined over time in col­l­ab­or­a­tion with Cage, whose own com­pos­i­tion­al methods rested on his ad­apt­a­tion of the I Ching, the hugely complex ancient Chinese text that seeks to find order in chance events, offering a set of pre­dic­tions arranged in a matrix of sixty-four groupings of six ho­r­i­zont­al lines, divined by casting sticks or tossing coins.

It is, too a prob­lem­at­ic approach to dis­play­ing work. For one thing, Cun­n­ing­ham is no match for Cage as a visual artist - as he would no doubt admit - so that visitors in late June might find them­selves dis­ap­poin­ted. For another, the appealing con­cep­tu­al un­der­pin­n­ings of the exhibit threaten to overwhelm the work it contains, forcing in­ter­pret­a­tions on works that might not stand elsewhere.

And what of that work? At the time of writing Cage is firmly to the fore, with just two pieces by Cun­n­ing­ham present in the galleries.

Like much of his music, the two sets of paintings by Cage on show were made according to chance outcomes guided by the I Ching applied to a set of pre­de­ter­mined choices - the colours, the com­pos­i­tion, the brushes used. Further removing himself as an artist from the act of creation, Cage also prepared his paper with smoke, and used river rocks as a guide for his brushes. The results, while re­co­g­n­is­ably var­i­a­tions on a theme, are not the cold, automated, re­pet­it­ive paintings one might expect. River Rocks and Smoke No. 13 is adorned with just two shapes, a yellow square-ish form and a dull brown half circle, placed low, almost apo­lo­get­ic­ally, on the paper. New River Wa­ter­co­l­our Series I, No. 3 sees a great ho­r­i­zont­al swathe of purple re­min­is­cent of a stave, which looks to have been applied with a house­p­ain­t­ers brush barely troubled with paint, overlayed with a confusion of dull red circles. A trio of paintings from New River Wa­ter­co­l­our, Series III - perhaps the best works on show - share a ver­ti­gin­ous downward plummet of dry strokes in­ter­rup­ted by circular forms, in one dead centre, in two escaping at the papers’ edge. To borrow from the etymology of the char­ac­ters than form the I Ching’s title, these are works that balance sim­pli­city, var­i­ab­il­ity and per­s­ist­ency. They are, too, in­her­ently musical, both visually re­min­is­cent of a graphic score and taut with an internal rhythm.

Cun­n­ing­ham’s main con­tri­bu­tion at this point in the show’s ebb and flow is Blue Studio: Five Segments. At points, it un­der­lines the re­la­tion­ship between painting composer and drawing cho­reo­graph­er­ - in one segment, Cun­n­ing­ham dances a duet with his own outline, in another he performs against a blue screen which slowly fills with shifting white noise, a match for the ho­r­i­zont­al washes in Cage’s wa­ter­co­l­ours, in a third, a set of precise hand gestures call to mind a conductor coralling his orchestra.

The single Cun­n­ing­ham drawing present on the day of my visit, Tiger, 5/3/97, is a vibrant little thing - the titular animal has a thick leering tongue and winking eyes, its fur and whiskers a flurry of scratchy marks. And, once again, it is im­pos­s­ible to avoid seeking out traces of the artist’s primary practice in his drawings, seeing in those hasty marks traces of Cun­n­ing­ham’s cho­reo­graphy, of the flick­er­ing fingers glimpsed in Blue Studio.

This, then, is a show that is greater than the sum of its parts, one that, arguably, works better as a con­cep­tu­al piece in its own right than as an ex­hib­i­tion of works. It is too, at the risk of sounding sen­ti­ment­al, a moving ex­per­i­ence - Cage and Cun­n­ing­ham’s long creative as­so­ci­a­tion and long part­n­er­ship continues here, even after the former’s death in 1992. In the end, No Fixed Points is an in­triguing glimpse at the parallel artistic en­dea­v­ours of two great artists in other media, and a tribute to the pair’s wider, in­ter­lock­ing practice.

This review was first published in The Herald on May 25th, 2007.