Loop the loop with love and lust

exhibitions: Valentine at Roger Billcliffe Fine Art, and Bad Girls at

the CCA. Yet so extreme is their individual stance, that sadly, I bet

few folk visit both. They should. Sex, love, desire, romance -- dress it

up how you will -- it still makes the world go round.

Helen Chadwick's Loop My Loop at CCA and Tom Wilson's First Love in

Valentine are in some ways identical: a love-knot composition spiced

with forbidden fruit. Wilson's intricate, precise, coloured drawings

combine the traditional serpent from the Garden of Eden with Eve's apple

and a fig leaf. Chadwick's post-feminist cibachrome incorporates

luxurious locks of golden blonde hair gently twined around a

pink-skinned sausage of pig's intestine to form a lavish love braid of

multiple contradictions. Both contain symbols of lust but while

tradition accustomed us to the snake, Chadwick's lewd, sensual embrace

may shock.

Valentine is, as you'd expect, a celebratory show: colourful, lush

with hearts and flowers, if some a bit cursory -- introduced at the last

minute, I guess. Just how many paintings happen to feature heart-shaped

cake tins, rings, croutons? Croutons? Oh, well, any excuse! The best

pictures here are those which stick to their own path. Brenda Lenaghan

and Sylvia von Hartmann are perpetually love-lorn, so their doves,

lovers, and Cupids ring true.

I enjoyed Helen Wilson's new work, first shown at the London Art Fair

in January, where it made a considerable impact. She is always a fine

draughtsman and good portraitist and her Cadbury's Roses head with its

halo of silver flowers augurs well for her big show in April. Kathryn

Kynoch always wows me with her portraits (Woman with Flower is a strong

unsentimental symphony in red). Donald Manson looks more and more like

Donaldson but without the wit, while Emilio Coia continues to hit the

nail on the head, this time with Other People's Valentines, a group of

clever caricatures of local heroes such as Billy Connolly. There's more

sweet and sour irony in David Evans's phallic pear and James McDonald's

Note plus lipstick kisses. I'm glad to see new work from Marion

McIntosh, Jila Peacock, and Rosemary Beaton while Duncan Shanks's Garden

Path is as attractive an oil as I have seen from him in a long time.

Billcliffe has recently diversified into the applied arts, so takes

the opportunity to show lots of lovely jewellery: delightful seed pearl

brooches by Jack Cunningham, stylishly minimal pewter brooches from Lynn

Park, and, my favourite, distinctive oxydised silver and brass pieces

liberally scattered with tiny hearts by Nicola Becci. Prices start at

#30. She is one third of an enterprising group called Ethos, set up by

1992 Glasgow graduates Becci, Maria Macdonald, and Fiona Gunn.

McDonald's Note would make a good mate for Basia Palka's love poem My

Pink Lipstick, one of several commissioned by the Nancy Smillie Gallery

for Be My Valentine. The show also includes rose-garlanded figures,

nicely nude and life-size, by Maretta Macleod. Great to see old friends

like Ambrozevich and Robertson both with happy-go-lucky images (the

Moulin Rouge hens are a hoot) but also good to find new folk from Des

Gorman's Paisley evening class, such as Sue Gerber with a fine portrait

and Graham Reekie's excellent Freud-like reclining figure.

I also noted Dorrian's life drawings, Tim Stead's beautiful coffee

tables, and Todd Garner's clay hearts. Garner also exhibits solo at

Glasgow's Collins Gallery.

Most poignant of all the above is a tiny chalk drawing by Andrew

Squire in Valentine. It's titled The Great Divide -- and says it all. A

boy and girl are nervously poised on a seat, so near and yet so far;

desperate to communicate; too frightened to speak in case of rebuff.

Each clutches a briefcase for dear life. Male/female interaction is

never easy. How often does fear hold us back? Never -- or so it would

seem -- for the six Bad Girls out to sully romance with sexual politics.

According to the dreadful catalogue they are ''sly, in-your-face,

provocative, shocking, sexy; determinedly confrontational; hard-hitting,

rapacious, ferocious, unabashed in their treatment of taboo subjects.

Chicks with Dicks? Amazons Castrating Captured Pirates. If the titles

are anything to go by, these women are worse than you feared.

But Bad Girls is, in fact, a misleading and pretty poor name for an

interesting, if uneven, show which is, however, less revolutionary than

the promoters would have us believe. Bad Girls implies all that's worst

about the rebellious adolescent syndrome. Surely the 1990s is beyond all

that. Predictably the three American artists are more strident and less

talented, with Sue Williams indulging in puerile graffiti; Nan Goldin

wallowing in gay sentiment, and Nicole Eisenman's raw lesbians resorting

to male copycat lascivious delight in coarse cartoon violence.

Brits Helen Chadwick, Dorothy Cross, and Rachel Evans win hands down

because their message is subvertive, ambiguous, and above all, clever.

Chadwick, one of our top artists, is a familiar figure. This time lambs'

tongues, fur pelts, and intestines make her distinctive, erotic,

visceral, tactile creations. Sounds vile, I know -- but her beautiful

sculptures defy description. See for yourself. Equally powerful

sculptures come from Irish artist Cross who works a la Chadwick. Using

cowhide and udders, their teats phallic nipples, she creates

frightening, memorable pieces like Bust and Dish Cover, reminiscent of

surreal perversity.

At first glance Evans's delicate, stylistically traditional pencil

drawings are straightforward. yet she, too, parodies romantic cliches

and fantasies, imaging herself as one half of an unlikely canoodling

couple: Jesus and I in the Garden of Gethsemane; Robinson and I at the

Beach.

Tomorrow at 2pm at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket, bad boy chauvinist

(Two-Girls-for-Every-Boy) Ross Sinclair will perform live in response to

his controversial installation. I hope all Bad Girls will be there to

take him to task for his Six-Pack Pussy T-shirts!