Edinburgh Exhibitions

Winston Roeth and Jonathan Owen, Ingleby Gallery 1 April - 14 May 2011

If it is unfamiliar to you, the discreetly located Ingleby Gallery ought to be a compulsory destination on any contemporary-art enthusiasts Edinburgh itinerary. Accessible only by venturing below The Regent Arch - which is, the observant will recognise, where Renton encounters car bonnet at speed in the Trainspotting Choose-Life sequence - or via Waverley Station's lesser-used north entrance, there is a certain Platform 9-and-three-quarters anticipation created in simply seeking it. Add to this out-of-the-way setting the distant thrum and echo of the passing East Coast service, the gallery space has a meditative character which makes it distinct from others in the city.

The current exhibition seems to unite its two artists in their manipulation and re-definition of the art-object.

Winston Roeth's slate arrangements negate our preconceptions of the material. It might be a cliche to state that the works transcend their materials however, through the application of pure tempera colour to the surface of the component parts, the effect is certainly a transformative one. The blocks - wall mounted - easily and elegantly take on the role that modernist painting has traditionally performed; arranged in regular grids and grouped according to their colour harmonies, the slates sound-out across the gallery space like visual chords.

This would seem to reflect a current trend in contemporary art. Martin Creed's solo exhibition Down Over Up at the Fruitmarket Gallery in 2010 playfully and variously examined the relationships between repeated units. His musical staircase could be seen as a literal - and audible - intepretaion of the same concerns as Roeth ; a study in the vibrations and discrepancies between types of object.

But these works also offer much to advocates of painterly patina. On close inspection the colour does not sit on the surface but is completely assimilated into the slate, creating the optical illusion - for this viewer at least - of crushed fabric or crepe. Despite being suspended by nails - the only detail which belies their true identity as masonry- the brain forgets what their natural weight and consistency ought to be and imbues the tablets with mysterious properties.

Edinburgh-based artist, Jonathan Owen, has continued in his creation of new objects through the erasure and reduction of found ones. Wooden nutcrackers and figurines, presumably created for decorative or commemorative purposes by anonymous craftsmen, join book-plates of public statues as subjects of his processes of subtraction. It is notable that Owen reduces, not systematically, but in a lyrical and sensitive way; the alterations appear to be made in accordance with the properties of the original form to create a new one which is often humorous in character.

But the figurative element in these objects - in contrast to the characterless Habitat standard-lamps and wine racks which have appeared in previous works- introduces sinister edge. The Bavarian, Grimm faces of the nutcrackers have been eroded as if by some isopteran weevil. The images of the statues, too, have evaporated from the paper which they are printed upon leaving behind only - say- their hands, suspended in mid air like Cheshire Cat smiles.

The process is deceptive in its apparent simplicity. Though we can clearly see the chips and marks of the chisel and the anomalous surface of the erased page - in other words - The-Hand-At-Work, one is ultimately baffled at how exactly these forms could be achieved