McLeod's digital prints

Andrew McLeod: Prints 2001-2008
Ivan Anthony
11 November – 6 December 2008

McLeod makes excellent digital prints that are wonderfully intricate and layered. To my mind, they are much more interesting than his less delicate paintings. Some of the dozen examples here do show elements used in his canvases, but mostly they feature floor plans and his interest in architectural space.

They tend to have a wit that the paintings deny – the latter seeming in contrast far too obvious. The prints have a deft, mercurial humour where contradictory elements swap over and interchange. Earth and the heavens mingle, anvils hover in the air, inside blends with out, domestic furniture ends up in the garden and cars get parked in the bedrooms where trees are also planted. Walls and semantic barriers have no meaning any longer. One of the prints is even set on a small canvas, as if to make that point.

The selection here is remarkably varied –in size and in image types. My favourite Cave Complex, is in the hallway, and quite hard to see. It has large silhouettes of lovers that form caves with their negative spaces. These are swum through by frogmen. Very clever and seductive, it is also otherworldly and magical. There is nothing dry or academic about it.

This is an entertaining exhibition. One of McLeod’s best.