Open Frequency

Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art. Selected artists are nominated by key curators, writers and artists from across the UK. Recently profiled Scotland-based artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson and Hayley Tompkins.

Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the arts council funded leading online resource for the contemporary art community.

Ally Wallace

Ally Wallace trained in painting in the mid-1980s before embarking on site-specific interventions, a route which came out of a period working with kinetic sculpture. His sculptures and installations are defined by their minimalist aesthetic of colour, paper and light, both natural and artificial, using limited means to craft simple forms with high visual impact.

I  try to keep things as simple as possible, using paper - I like the idea that something can appear quite substantial and permanent using really simple, lightweight means - making something quite monumental in scale just by folding and taping together lots of sheets of A4 paper.'

He takes inspiration from the architecture of his surroundings and graphics plastered on the buildings around cities, reduced to simple blocks of shape, colour and light to create dynamic responses to the urban landscape, often referencing the linear structures of multi-storey car parks, flats, and shop fronts.

Early projects were sited in the interiors of artist-run spaces, warehouses and other architectural settings using a variety of materials and technologies, including sound and video, to subtly alter the experience of the space.

Since 2000, the installations have moved out of the interior and into the public realm, yet Wallace has strived to preserve the close relationship between the private activity of the studio and the public art project: 'I have always tried to maintain the close link between studio work and public art commissions, trying to keep it all as one thing. I quite like the fact that I'm doing my own work really but out in the public domain'.

Blink

'Blink' was a large-scale installation in the windows of Market Gallery in Glasgow's East End in January 2004, one of five solo exhibitions curated by Susannah Thompson.

At the time Wallace had recently moved to this area of Glasgow and the project captured his first impressions. Expanded across all three windows of the gallery, it appeared to run continuously from one space into the next.

A paper screen made up of 700 sheets of flourescent A4 paper, the piece was set back from the window pane 'projecting bigness and brightness' into the heavy, overcast urban landscape of the city's East End'.  The piece successfully drowned out the myriad of fluorescent signs which litter the windows of bargain shops, resounding brightly out onto the street and across the road to the pavement beyond.

Writing in anticipation of the project Susannah Thompson commented, 'Some may argue that Tanzarote, Magic Tan and Console Sunbed Emporium do much the same job, that a neon blaze of colour at the corner of Duke Street is a Dan Flavin-esque attempt to play Dennistonians at their own game. I disagree ... The beauty of blinding colour and light in such works is that such a peacock-plume display is rarely seen without the addendum of an advert or a cashing-in of some sort. Wallace's work is free from such hype and bluster and will act as an aesthetic antidote to seasonal affective disorder of mind and body'.

Cube

Ally Wallace was the third Scottish artist to be commissioned by An Tuireann to produce a new work for its JIPB Cube Gallery.  The series is an international collaboration between galleries in France, Japan, Denmark and Scotland, promoting contemporary art within a rural environment.  The piece for the cube was a challenge to his practice, and an attempt to downsize his work for this particular space.

Using a sheet of paper with concentric holes cut out, the work is transformed from a light-weight and fragile material to a piece which gives the impression of solidity from one viewpoint.

Curator Steven McKenzie provides the following account of the installation at An Tuireann:

'Twelve pieces of stretched cartridge paper, 78cm (each sheet part of a size progression of concentric circles). Two acrylic poles with suckers at each end, a glass cube 80cm, a white plinth 100cm x 80cm, a Cartesian equation of a circle, x+y=a, and the ancient rules of proportion and symmetry. The sum parts of Wallace's work for the JIPB Cube Gallery.

The result: A sublime pseudo architectural sculpture.

First theorems related to circles are attributed to Thales around 650BC whereby mathematics was intrinsically linked to architecture, and from this classical rules of the ancients were formed in proportion and symmetry. Mathematics brought logic, harmony and an understanding of aesthetics that aligned a universal appreciation of the visual. Where visual art aided mathematics, mathematics aided architecture, and formulas were created of perfect proportions.

Looking at Wallace's sculpture you could be looking at a visual reflection of one such mathematic equation. The mathematical beauty and systematic logic of Wallace's work becomes complete when light is introduced.

Light - its admission through it and diffusion creates new changing dynamics of the work. Wallace's piece is an exercise in the use of a set volume and how light and space can be manipulated within, by using such simple means as sheets of paper with holes cut out. The paper is lightweight and fragile, constructed in a way that the assembly gives the impression of solidity from one point, to an ephemeral almost invisible form side on, presenting a changing 360 view.

One element that theory cannot determine is an emotional response to the visual experience of beauty. Firstly the appearance of form and sensation through line, shape, colour and tone and secondly the purpose spoken in the form. Wallace's work employs ancient forms and aesthetic beauty that realizes a complete visual experience.'

Biography

Ally Wallace  was born in Lanark in 1960.  He studied painting at Sunderland Polytechnic and site-specific sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art, London.

He has moved around the UK since 1985, living in Edinburgh, Brighton, London and rural Northumberland, moving to Glasgow in 2003; each location has had a particular influence on his practice.

He has exhibited widely since the mid-1980s, a combination of public art projects and solo or group exhibitions. Public projects include Burghley House (sculpture park, 2001), Rufford Abbey, Newark (sculpture park, 2003), New Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital (exterior, 2004), a solar-powered light piece for the Napier Building, Govan, Glasgow (exterior, 2005) and Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow (2006). He was the lead artist on the wayfinding strategy at the City General Hospital, Stoke on Trent (2005).

The An Tuireann 'Cube' commission will travel to Bovlingbjerg , Denmark, Ichinomiya, Japan and Jarnac, France, throughout 2007.

Current projects include a collaborative project with HLM Architects, Glasgow, on the New Victoria Hospital in Glasgow, and a permanent outdoor work at the new Royal Alexandria Children's Hospital in Brighton.  Ally lives and works in Glasgow.

All images courtesy Ally Wallace.