Every year, do­g­ger­fish­er­ mounts a group show. Rather than lay out the gallery’s wares, gallerist Susannah Beaumont gathers together re­p­res­en­ted artists, artists who have shown in in the space before and in­ter­n­a­tion­al artists whose work has never before been seen in Scotland. This time, there is a theme too, with the six artists chosen all sharing a concern for ‘the divide and the shared territory between sculpture and wall-based work’.

As themes go, it seems fair to say that this is a loose one, bordering on the nebulous, but, whether it’s really an excuse to get a bunch of sym­path­et­ic artists in a room together or not, it works, giving the visitor a hook on which to hang their thoughts about the work on show.

Some seem to have taken the tension between work that goes on the floor and work that goes on the wall rather literally. Sally Osborn’s twin in­stal­l­a­tions, are both titled Thinking For U, and both feature black wax discs, and, yes, one is on the floor, under a puddle of water, a second is up on the wall and a third bridges the gap, propped up between the two. But there is more to Osborn’s work than that. She drapes found furniture - a low stool and a high backed chair - with lengths of fabric, striped and printed with text, ef­fort­lessly evoking, if not a narrative, then a heady at­mo­sphere, hinting at rituals, half suburban, half glamorous.

Tension and to-and-froing is ever­y­where, and not just in terms of the di­f­fer­ence between the sculptor’s floor and painter’s wall. Neil Clements’ Tipton is os­ten­s­ibly a painting - in fact it is a painting, in the sense of being canvas covered with paint - but the canvas is stretched over a jagged, off-kilter geo­met­ric­ally formed frame, and the oil is applied in an even coating, making the work a sculp­tur­al form, more than anything else. That it is hung on the wall fits the un­der­ly­ing theme of the show, but Clements is exploring different territory too, placing his work in between two media.

Jonathon Owen is up to similar tricks. His untitled piece is made from a rubber car mat, and hung up on the wall, but the real tension here is between the re­con­fig­ur­a­tion of a lowly quotidian object into something almost comically precious, the dull rubber cut with ex­tra­vag­ant care into a lacy filigree, a pattern that clashes with the existing tri­an­gu­lar shapes incised in the surface to provide grip for a driver’s feet.

Clements’ untitled in­stal­l­a­tion, a thin metal structure that cordons off an area to the rear of the gallery, deals in tension of a different sort: at intervals, the metal form is lit by a sudden burst of red neon light. The sudden, un­pre­dict­able click and flash of the bulb is dis­t­inc­tly unnerving, a dis­tract­ing warning that something - God knows what - is up.

Clair Barclay’s work dominates the main gallery space, and, as ever, her multi-part in­stal­l­a­tion is complex, oddly dis­qui­et­ing and powerful. Barclay’s work always carries hints of a situation or event, in­var­i­ably mys­ter­i­ous, rarely pleasant. This dis­com­fort­ing air is enhanced by the use of at­tract­ive, tactile materials - she tends toward the organic, for want of a better word, often using animal hides, printed fabric, porcelain, untreated wood and de­l­ic­ately machined metals, objects with an unknown purpose. A brass frame leans against the wall, bearing a skimpy curtain of red and white, like an unusable deck-chair. Connected to the frame by looping brass wires, there are three wooden objects, shaped to resemble skittles, or, more men­a­cingly, stout clubs. A second assembly sees another frame, free-standing this time, bearing a wedge-shaped platform on which rests a trio of circular brass forms, like a pocket watch or compass stripped of its workings. What Barclay is hinting at is anyone’s guess - taste­fully tooled up Mods and Rockers sprang to my mind, of all things, thanks to that deck-chair and those clubs - but the re­la­tion­ship she sets up between the discrete parts of her in­stal­l­a­tions is so precise, so taught, that meaning doesn’t seem to matter.

If it weren’t for Barclay’s strong presence, Albrecht Schäfer would ab­so­lutely steal the show. Indeed, his untitled sculpture has the look of an element stripped out from one of Barclay’s in­stal­l­a­tions. Twin wooden laths stretch from floor to ceiling, curved at the midpoint, just touching each other and ap­par­ently under great tension. It is as if these two thin lengths of timber are holding up the gallery roof, and as if a well aimed kick to the base of Shäfer’s structure could bring the building tumbling down. His other pieces here are more delicate. Noguchi Split is a tran­s­form­a­tion of the Japanese-American sculptor and designer’s ubi­quit­ous paper globe lampshade, cut along its bamboo lines and allowed to fall into thin in­ter­lock­ing spirals of wood and paper. As with the untitled laths, Shäfer makes a simple gesture to powerful effect, eco­n­om­ic­ally exploring the nature of the material or object to hand. More complex are the pieces he has installed in do­g­ger­fish­er­’s office space, Propeller No. 1 - Propellor No. 17, a reprise of a 1989 work. The pro­pel­lors, tiny and made of paper, like origami sycamore seed heli­c­op­ters, are set on match­st­ick­-thin slivers of wood pro­trud­ing from the wall, light enough to move in the air cir­cu­lat­ing around the room. Some hardly budge at all, others turn at a sluggish pace, and one, placed directly above a radiator, spins on its axis like crazy. They’re de­light­ful, mes­mer­ising machines, and, again, Schäfer makes a lot out of very little.

The same goes for Sara Barker, who presents a pair of curving forms, like off-cuts from a Brutalist building. They are simple, beautiful things, but at first glance, both look mono­l­ith­ic, heavy, menacing - if you found these sculp­tures sitting next to you at the bar, you’d be sure not to spill their pints - but on closer ex­am­in­a­tion, their stumpy heft is partly an illusion. They are not solid lumps of building material, but made of cardboard slathered in concrete.

Other works do not fit in quite so neatly - Owen’s carefully burnt and woven book pages, Clements’ for­get­t­able oil land­s­capes on steel - but what might at first appear to be a rather thin cur­at­or­i­al conceit turns out to prompt un­ex­pec­ted, even unlikely con­nec­tions between a broad group of artists, and offers un­fore­seen means of un­der­stand­ing their work.

This review was first published in The Herald on March 21st, 2008.