Year of the Horse

The final year of artist and writer Harry Horse, who died in Shetland in January 2007, provided the words and images for this solo performance by Tam Dean Burn, which takes the form of a digital exhibition accompanied by an compelling audio tour.

The actor provides the voice of the artist, whose richly poetic texts were published alongside his striking images after his editor at the Sunday Herald asked him 'to deconstruct [his] doodlings' at the beginning of 2006.

That images of violence and death pervade the work is not surprising, given that the 'War on Terror' in its various guises was his primary subject matter. However, it's difficult not also to read into some of the more disturbing images and phrases hints of the artist's own troubled psyche, knowing now of the circumstances of his death.

Horse's extraordinary images are neither doodlings nor cartoons – his false modesty would have fooled no-one. His speciality was not of-the-moment observations about the politics of the day, week or year; satirical funnies to be appreciated for a couple of seconds and then forgotten. Some of his creations – such as his bleached skill with the distorted, almost embryonic faces of Bush and Blair in its eye sockets – were designed to haunt, while other less literal renderings remain powerfully disquieting.

This presentation of 52 of Horse's images in a single hour highlights his incredible ability to capture the essence of a single figure in endless different ways. He portrayed Tony Blair in contrasting styles as a rat, a devil, a Big Brother figure and even as a landscape, 'Blair's island of the dead'.

Tam Dean Burn has set himself quite a challenge in turning a regular newspaper feature into a performance, and the show suffers from a loss momentum towards the end, but it's difficult to imagine anyone more effectively voicing this artist's eloquent thoughts and fears on war, politics, contemporary culture and state surveillance.

Reviewed in February 2009.

No Edinburgh Fringe performances on August 10, 17 or 24.