Belting out the icons

Artist Jim Lambie uses belts and training shoes in his Split Endz sculpture
Fisun Gner|Metro5 April 2012
The Weekender

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Trashy and retro-kitsch, Scottish artist Jim Lambie presents glittery pop sculptures, from pairs of stilettos daubed in gloss paint and embedded in concrete plinths, to doors that have been folded in half to form jutting geometric patterns, like arrested images in a kaleidoscope.

Jeans, black pudding, belts, mirrors, speakers, hosepipe, wardrobes, window lintels and vinyl records also feature prominently in his quest to turn everyday items into icons of retro glamour. As you can imagine, the effect is all a bit psychedelic, spacey and a little bit crazy.

Lambie's best known for covering whole gallery floors with strips of multi-coloured vinyl, transforming interiors into something dizzying and vertiginous. Though painstakingly executed, these floor coverings are playful and exuberant; you may even wish to skip lightly across their glittery, Day-Glo surfaces.

Here, seven sculptures occupy two floors of Sadie Coles HQ. They all have silly titles, as if they are gleaned from particularly tacky album covers: Blacktronic Science, Sweet Exorcist, By Way Of The Drum and Gloria G.L.O.R.I.A..

They make no attempt to conjure up anything in particular, they are just made up of odd placements of disparate objects. In Split Endz (wig mix), dozens of belts are looped through holes in a four-sided wooden construction.

Like Lambie, lots of artists make music and pop culture references in their work and lots of artists, because of their childhood memories, pay homage to the 1970s. They'll usually be male vinyl-obsessives, and you think they might still be stuck on memories of their first glitterball school disco, complete with portable, flashing coloured lights.

And, just like those awkward school disco days, there is something homemade, makeshift, make-do and wistful about their work. Lambie, however, probably stands out because his reconfigurations of flimsy objects are executed with a certain amount of wit and panache.

But he can only do the same kind of thing for so long, until we feel that he needs to think about changing the record.

Until May 7, Sadie Coles HQ, 35 Heddon Street W1, Tue to Sat 10am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7434 2227. Tube: Oxford Circus

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