Playing to the galleries

In The Poem About Love You Don't Write The Word Love

CCA, Glasgow

THE time has finally come to say what I should have said long ago. The CCA galleries don't work. Any hopes I may have had are exposed as foolish by the current, wordily-titled exhibition. I feel deeply sorry for guest curator Tanya Leighton, who has bravely attempted to put together a show which even in the most forgiving of spaces would have been challenging - but more of that later.

Here, she never really stood a chance. Take Gallery 1 which contains two of the most significant artworks. In the centre is a curious wooden structure laid out with poetry and photographs linking Burns to Colombian guerrillas. This is Lucas Ospina's In a poem about art a curator doesn't write the word curator which gives the show its bowdlerised title. It's a serious, sensitive work deserving our attention. Seen here though, in your face as you enter from Sauchiehall Street, it struggles to engage.

It is also too close to the other truly important work here, Jeremy Deller's brilliantly conceived video History in Action, in which the acclaimed 2004 Turner prizewinner films a festival of military re-enactors, blending 1,000 years of warfare in one witty, cataclysmic moment which prompts diverse thoughts on time, heritage, obsession and death. It should be the most compelling piece in the show. But in the wrong environment it's hard to appreciate its true worth. Because, let's be honest, 'Gallery 1' is really no more than a foyer. It might be suitable for a single piece of sculptural overspill. But to treat it as a permanent exhibition space is just wrong.

The fact that it is divided from the other exhibition galleries by the main atrium is also disruptive to the flow of any exhibition. And while you're crossing from one gallery to another - in limbo - pause to think for a moment about precisely where you are. You're in a cafe; rising three stories. A vast open atrium of hot air. Music plays. People eat, drink and chat. And above this sociable hum rises another familiar noise. It's the crash of the cash register. In the old days this space used to be part of the art gallery. Now, it is the heart of the entire building. While certainly it must be more financially productive, surely it should be filled with art, not paying punters?

Such criticisms were voiced when the new look CCA relaunched at the cost of £10m of public money in 2001, but were quickly subsumed in the generally optimistic brouhaha. Now they can be seen for their true worth. Let me say it again. The current arrangement of space simply does not work.

BEYOND the cafe, the corridor that is amusingly titled 'Gallery 2' has been subdivided to contain three works. To view Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson's influential 1971 video Swamp you have to stand in the middle of the thoroughfare while all that Phillip Lai gets is the left-hand wall. I wonder, if this area were ever to attract an audience of more than four people at the same time, how they would view anything?

Behind a temporary wall lies Jean-Luc Godard's seminal 1970 film Here and Elsewhere, focusing sensitively on the Arab Resistance movement, and here at least there is a bench which might accommodate three people. But the lighting is poor and with sound leaking in from the cafe and the rest of the show, it's hard to concentrate.

Walking on we emerge in the only really viable ground floor exhibition space - Gallery 3. Here again Leighton scores with John Smith's hilarious and underrated 1976 video The Girl Chewing Gum, in which the soundtrack of a man's voice directing the action in the film is in fact a retrospective dubbing - an attempt to make sense of the randomness of the everyday and a telling comment on the abiding hubris and delusion of the human condition.

It makes a nice counterpoint to the similarly universal message of Emily Jacir's Sexy Semite and Francois Bucher's folded magazine images with their echoes of the Surrealists' Cadavres Exquis. I wasn't so taken, however, with Mai-Thu Perret's piece of bush or the disproportionate amount of floorspace accorded hip New Yorker Gareth James, although Sue Tompkins' simple folded papers were as beautifully enigmatic as ever.

The tour concludes upstairs in Gallery 6. Again there is a sense of disjointedness. But this is compensated for by the quality of the work. First up is a video by Walid Raad which purports to be a piece of security film footage shot by a sacked espionage officer in 1995 on Beirut's coastal promenade - then a meeting place for friends and spies.

Again Leighton's choice cuts straight to the heart and makes compulsive viewing. Next door she offers a slide show by Allan Sekula focusing on America's Mark Twain heritage industry, which opens our eyes to the cultural and emotional vulnerability of a supposedly powerful nation. If you are wondering what ties all this together other than notions of politics and personal freedom, don't bother looking in the single page of literature which outdoes all previous efforts as a contender for Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner.

I can't bring myself to quote from it, nor do I really want to know who wrote it. Its parade of sententious and yawningly vacuous postmodern artspeak can only serve to perpetuate the perception of the contemporary art world as a self-serving elite. It is the responsibility of any publicly funded gallery to explain the art it shows to its public in terms they understand.

Clearly, the CCA has been in trouble for some time, the departure of its director late last year was only the latest in a catalogue of core staff losses, and after a year of lacklustre shows, this directionless behemoth is walking blind. Inviting someone of Leighton's talent to curate a show was brave, but can only be a short-term answer to a major problem. The gallery needs to take itself in hand. Only through a comprehensive rethink of both the use of its space and the presentation of its exhibitions can it hope to fulfil its potential.

Until January 28