A still, pink haze is not the most exotic thing that Finola Jones has installed in the Green on Red gallery for her "Crazy On The Outside" show. Light from outside is ushered into the gallery through chiffon drapes, which seem to fill the air with the finest of pink dust, but all this serves principally to trumpet the gentle entrance of a baby elephant.
Something like life size, the creature balances on three legs on a triangular marble painted plinth beneath an array of dressing room light bulbs. The animal's "skin" is made from thousands of pink silk roses, pressed together to form a rolling, furrowed surface.
Unlike James Turrell, whose light experiments are echoed here, Jones does not pump up her DIY SFX to the pitch of science fiction. Instead, the light in the room, like the ridges of the rose petals, serves to soften the outline, to convert the bulk of an elephant into something less tangible, rendering the obvious, for a moment, escapable.
There is a complexity here which is exacting, even frustrating, but eventually seductive and rewarding. An air of popish inscrutability and a wealth of visual fibs suggests that, while the elephant finds itself the centre of attention, it is, on some levels, remote from the significance of the piece.
As echoes and suggestions fill the room, the beast's pose its servile, cloying posture seems to assume more importance than its animal identity. In conflict even with gravity, the elephant balances, ignoring its tormentors, as if believing that the violence of perseverance will force them to back away into the pink mist.