The latest exhibit at In­ver­leith is not a group show, but nor is it a pair of solo outings. Instead, curator Paul Nesbitt has brought together two Glasgow artists, sculptor Nick Evans and painter Tony Swain, who share certain concerns, rooted in a de­lib­er­ate, in­vest­ig­at­ive approach, and a tendency to set their audience a series of chal­lenges.

Tony Swain paints over newspaper pages, allowing existing images - pho­to­graphs, design elements and the flow of text - to guide his brush and set his palette of colours.

It seems that, first and foremost, he has taken to the medium for its sug­gest­ive prop­er­ties, a way to prompt his ima­gin­a­tion and to constrain it, a chance to accept new chal­lenges posed by a page’s layout. But there is much more going on than that. Newsprint is a fragile, temporary medium, not just in the sense of being tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, but in the way it dimples under the weight of paint, and yellows in sunlight, becoming brittle over time. Swain makes no attempt to halt this process - the works on show here curl up at the corners, and waft in the draft from an open window - as if he wants his paintings, for all the care he takes over them, to be seen as of a moment, the moment of their making. Even his titles, which are brief, gnomic, and share an economy of language with newspaper headlines, hint that these are works for today, not for all time.

Swain must be aware, too, that in choosing to leave this image intact, or letting that paragraph peep through his layers of paint, viewers will attempt to puzzle out meaning. In According to Era, a figure of in­de­ter­m­in­ate gender, trapped behind painted bars, is almost com­p­letely ob­l­it­er­ated, with nothing remaining but a shock of hair and a pair of folded arms. In the bottom left corner, a pull quote leaps out, reading “I planned my suicide for weeks. My jump rope was made of leather so I knew it would hold my weight.”. Is this, then, a painting about attempted suicide, with the absent figure and prison bars suggested as much by the text, which Swain must have read, as they are by the formal aspects of the printed image? And if it is, how are we to account for the single legible gobbet of printed text that remains unpainted in amongst the collaged suburban apo­c­a­lypse of Re­mem­ber­ed as one? This time, it seems im­pos­s­ible to reconcile old news of Menzies Campbell’s tenure as leader of the Lib Dems with the overblown fantasy landscape Swain has crafted over and around the text.

The puzzle of the marks Swain makes is harder still to unravel. Too sorry, and Something vital soon both look to have been culled from broad­sheet travel sup­ple­ments, and in both Swain has done re­l­at­ively little with his source material, extending a tropical blue sky here, hiding a figure there, but present­ing more than re-working. But in The family kept changing shape, an out-of-focus printed pho­to­graph of what looks like a dancer’s legs, Swain crafts a com­p­letely in­con­gru­ous miniature cityscape, dwarfed by the limbs above it. Then, returning to Re­mem­ber­ed as one, the viewer is faced with a work made of multiple slices of newsprint, with a tidal wave looming over sets of windows, a brick-walled tunnel, an inverted image of crowds at a pro­ces­sion of carnival, the collaged parts linked together by brushwork in such a way that it is nigh on im­pos­s­ible to tell where one image begins and another ends, or whether a given element has been slightly altered or com­p­letely created by Swain’s hand.

In the down­s­tairs galleries, Nick Evans offers a different set of problems for the viewer to ponder. Like Swain, his work is born of his chosen materials, and the result of an intuitive process.

First come Figures Standing, a trio of towering, totem-like forms. They are made of blocks of cast aluminium that betray their origins as shaped poly­s­tyr­ene. This is the first in a series of in­ter­n­al­ised con­tra­dic­tions. The brittle, breakable and dis­pos­able nature of poly­s­tyr­ene is con­tras­ted with the soft, pliable but permanent nature of aluminium. But poly­s­tyr­ene and aluminium are not opposites, they share a lightness, and Evans, con­trar­ily, uses that lightness to set up another con­tra­dic­tion: these mo­nu­ment­al struc­tures that loom over the viewer are, re­gard­less of their real weight and stability, dan­ger­ously fragile, threat­en­ing to topple at the slightest touch. Then there’s that title, which suggests Evans is in re­p­res­ent­a­tion­al mode, or at least providing a context, even as he presents a work that is dis­t­inc­tly formalist. Next door, another con­tra­dic­tion comes in the form of Numbers, seven small pots resting on a shelf. This time, the title is less thorny, hinting that these are editions in an ongoing series that sees Evans aiming, if not at the Platonic form of a pot, then to make a very good pot indeed, a project suggested by his material, porcelain. And yet these cast pots, be they vase-like or gourd-shaped, show signs of their making, bearing traces of the molds that made them. Like the standing figures, there is also a sense that Evans is playing games with the prop­er­ties of his materials and methods - these drab little things are res­ol­utely matte, with none of the tran­s­lu­cent sheen as­so­ci­ated with porcelain, and their skew-whiff nature must be meant to undermine the usual goals of the potter, who aims for symmetry and balance.

The final pair of works on show, Figures Fallen are, despite their title, quite unlike the first three. This time, Evans figures come closer to re­p­res­ent­a­tion than before, with twin Z-shaped sculp­tures resting on the floor, calling to mind seated versions of the figures that guard the coastline of Easter Island. Made of plaster, their surfaces are ridged, sug­gest­ing that they were cast in molds made of cor­rug­ated cardboard (though given Evans’ slippery way of working, they might have been carefully marked by hand). And, while the title is apt in the sense that these are indeed figures, it offers another de­lib­er­ate in­con­s­ist­ency: the twin works are mounted on the floor to give the illusion that they are hovering just above it, figures falling, not Figures Fallen.

In the end, this is a powerful pairing, bristling with subtle con­nec­tions. Evans and Swain are not simply a good match, they are allies of a sort, both deeply attuned to their media, both exposing the strate­gies and tactics they use to make work, both among the very best artists working in Scotland today.

This review was first published in The Herald on March 7th, 2008.