Pantone 485 sounds more like something to wash your hair with rather than the colour of the backdrop to a major slice of art.

Brewery visual arts officer Trevor Avery is pretty chuffed at the moment having landed an exhibition by 1996 Turner Prize winner, Douglas Gordon, out of the Arts Council collection, and off on a national tour organised by London's Hayward Gallery.

One of the provisos of bringing the show to the Warehouse Gallery made Trevor see red, literally, as Pantone 485 is the shade the prominent Mr Gordon says the gallery walls must be painted to accommodate his work. Blood red suggests the interior of the body.

He also specifies the height at which the seven photographs of a baby biting its toes in his Croque Mort (2000) single installation must be hung.

The unusually low height is, apparently, so the images have a relationship with the body of the viewer rather than the head.

And from what I've seen so far, the way in which the artist scrutinises the image of the baby is more unsettling than sentimental.

Babies can put their feet in their mouths, but the way Douglas Gordon twists this normal infant self-exploration by cropping the photographs so they focus on certain areas on the body, and enlarging them, converts a somewhat playful picture into something rather unnerving.

Born and brought up in Scotland, Douglas trained at Glasgow School of Art from 1984 to 1988, moving south to London's Slade School of Art.

He rose to prominence in the mid-1990s as part of the young British artists' generation with a reputation based mainly on his large film installations, which use footage from classic Hollywood movies.

24 Hour Psycho (1993) remains his best-known work, representing Alfred Hitchcock's legendary 1960 flick Psycho, on a huge screen suspended over the heads of awe-struck visitors.

He was awarded the Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale in 1997, the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998 and divides his time between Glasgow and London.

For the record, the title Croque Mort refers to a French term for those who deal with the bodies of the dead (undertakers and gravediggers) and is, apparently, a play on words as croque, from the French verb croquer, means bite and mort is death or dead person.

However, it has the same sound as mordre, another word meaning bite.

Perhaps it is best translated, I'm informed by those driving the Douglas Gordon PR machine, as death eater', which has its roots in the medieval practice of biting the toes of a corpse to check the person is really dead.

The mind boggles.

So, armed with rollers and paint, Trevor led his hard-working makeover team into the Brewery's red period'.

The question is, after Croque Mort finishes on July 6, what colour will the gallery's walls be next?

For further details contact 01539-725133.

May 29, 2003 12:30