Holly Knox Yeoman: Do I have a problem with artists whose pieces look disassociated from each other?

I'm really not sure.

I went to see Jean-Marc Bustamante's Dead Calm at the Fruitmarket Gallery and as I walked in I felt a little bewildered - couldn't tell if they were finishing setting up the show or not but the shop assistant was very nice and assured me that I must go in but be aware "that his most recent work was upstair." It was an interesting exhibition in that it was definitely diverse with each of his styles easily being percieved as being made by a different artist. The only running themes in his work were his use of plexiglass, a very interesting and versatile medium in exploring the ideas of connecting images with objects and urban places and nature (still not as good as M. Camille Chaimowicz - phenom.)

There is something that puts the viewer at unease when viewing works by the same artist that just do not correlate. I've been trying hard to work out whether in my work if it looks disjointed i.e. publications, studio and public interventions, found and sourced objects, video and audio work and I can't work out if I'm more of a J. Bustamante than a M.Camille Chaimowicz. I expect in my case I am a Bustamante in that my eclecticisms seem to be dominant in my personal existence and are fed into my artistic identity (if it is possible to detach these from one another). But then again this need not be an issue, for instance when you buy an album, you hope that it differs from the artists previous and if it's not up to scratch you are like "what the flip!" So perhaps it is better to leave the audience with a sense of disorientation and indecision to be able to tell if they are actually disappointed or really intrigued by the work on offer, keep 'em firmly on their toesy's and unable to judge (fingers crossed, bad attitude to have)?!

Here are some images of previous Bustamante work;