|
art
: reviews
Trackers
- Ahlam Shibil
Max Wigram Gallery, 99 New Bond Street, W1 / Bond Street tube / Mon to
Fri, midday - 6pm and Sat, midday - 5pm / Until Sat 16 Sep / Free
Amidst the vulgarity of Bond Street's 'loadsamoney' shops
and snooty rich people there is currently something of greater importance,
richly contrasting with its surroundings and all the more outstanding
therefore. Trackers is an exhibition of 85 photographic prints, some colour,
some black and white, which serve to document the lives of young Palestinian
men. Or at least Palestinian is what cartographic geography would call
them. More specifically they are Palestinians of Bedouin decent who live
in Israel, who are not Jewish and who have joined the Israeli Army's boarder
patrol units voluntarily. Some of the photographs encompass middle and
long distance while others are close ups. Shibil is not the first person
to use this technique but that doesn't diminish from its effectiveness
- the distance shots show soldiers, armed manifestations of sides of a
political conflict, while the close-ups show people; someone's son, brother,
friend.
In the 1970's a Rabbi whose name I have no chance of remembering
(I cut out a newspaper article so that I would be able to cite him for
this point but I can't even remember where I've put the cutting) gave
a lecture at the International Hebrew University in which he suggested
that the cause of the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and of
most conflicts for that matter, is that people have been culturally conditioned
to see other people as physical manifestations of a trans-personal concept
rather than as individual people; people therefore become political ideals
with arms and legs instead of another person, potentially your friend.
Shibil's contrasting distance shots emphasising uniform and military mechanism
contrast strongly with the details of humanity, like catching a nap, smoking
a cigarette, writing to family, being photographed next to a picture of
loved ones. While this might not be the cheeriest of exhibitions, it is,
to some degree, a reminder that our time is not a particularly cheery
one. Sadly, I can't imagine that the exhibition will be seen by anyone
who is in a position to effect a cease fire (Israeli or Hesbullah military
commanders) but Tracker is a contribution, on whatever scale, to public
opinion and a contribution in the direction of peacefulness. KM
art home
top of page
Between a Rock and a Hard
Place - The Stone in Art
Curated by Danny Moynihan / Kenny Schachter Rove, 17 Britannia
Street WC1 / Kings Cross tube / Open Mon to Sat, 10am - 6pm / Until Sun
26 Aug / Free
Some shows are collections of work in a similar style,
others are collections of work around a similar theme. Rather than the
theme being portraiture, politics or landscapes, the theme of this show
is stone. Sounds straight forward enough and seeing the exhibition made
me wonder why more exhibitions don't examine the substance from which
our earth is made.
Something that can't go un-mentioned is the scale of this
show - both physically and metaphorically we are invited to travel (quite
literally, Kenny Schachter Rove is a very big space) both to other parts
of the earth and to different times. The first piece in this show is the
documentation of a carving which straight away reminds the viewer that
stone carving and symbolism are very ancient. Olafur Eliasson gives us
a different take - a desert scene printed on glass.
What we first see is in colour and more or less unremarkable.
It is only when we walk past it, en route to the next part of the exhibition,
that we see that the back of the image is in black and white. While simple,
the effect is like stained glass windows in churches - in the daytime
they are dark from the outside and seem illuminated from inside, at night
time, they are dark from inside but glow from outside. There is also an
Andy Goldsworthy piece and for those impressed by big names, the show
also contains work by Damien Hirst, Richard Long and David Hockney. What
is also notable about this exhibition is the number and depth of references
to rocks and stones in Chinese history and mythology, which give the show
a sense of history and, dare I say, weight. KM
art home
top of page
Dark Matter
White Cube, Hoxton Square, N1 / Old Street tube / Open Tue to
Sat, 10am - 6pm / Until Sat 9 Sep / Free
Are art exhibitions going to start wearing uniforms? It
doesn't seem like very long ago that group shows were literally exhibitions
of work that more than one or two artists had made, without any overly
pressing need to have a particular theme. Enter the curators, when about
six or seven years ago the Curating course at the Royal College of Art,
amongst other places, became fashionable, and now seemingly every exhibition
which contains the work of more than one person has been 'curated' by
someone who calls themselves a 'curator'. This isn't all bad, as a number
or responses to a common theme can be enriching and positive. Between
a Rock and a Hard Place at Kenny Schachter Rove is a good example
of a large number of works which are all connected by one common physical
starting point - stone.
Dark Matter, however, seems to have taken that
a little bit further. There are a large number of different works by different
artists in this show, but they all have one, rather noticeable thing in
common. They're all black. Every print is black. Every painting is black.
Every sculpture is black. A Cerith Wyn Evans piece is made of neon light
tubing, and the neon light tubing is, naturally, black. I don't wish to
sound in any way Daily Mail about this. The Cerith Wyn Evans piece is
actually a very nice thing. It is the words "And if I don't meet
you no more in this world, then I'll meet you in the next one and don't
be late, don't be late" from Hendrix's Voodoo Chile. The
neon tubing itself emits no 'light' as such but the back of the wording,
not painted black, emits what effectively looks like light's shadow, or
a shadow of light.
I think it is probably helpful to remember that all of
the pieces in their appropriate context are interesting works. What arguably
does all of the works a collective injustice is being put together by
someone calling him or herself a curator on no grounds other than they
are all the same colour. But although the risibility of the exhibition's
'curatorial concept' makes it harder work for the viewer to take each
piece seriously, I would suggest that it is still worth the effort as
there are some interesting pieces by Gary Hume, Ellsworth Kelly, Andy
Warhol and Richard Serra. KM
art home
top of page
60th Anniversary Exhibition
Gimple Fils, 30 Davies Street, W1 / Bond Street tube / Open Mon to Fri,
10am - 5.30pm and Sat, 11am - 4pm / Until Sat 2 Sep / Free
Its nice to know that a (relatively) small gallery can
last for 60 years, isn't it? Or is it? On the one hand, an organisation
which enables the public to look at original works of art for free is
a good thing you'd think. But what if its shows are very, very mediocre?
Any thinking person would guess that New Labour should
be an improvement on the relics of Thatcher's government (or perhaps they
were better at PR), but 60 years of Tony Blair? When so much of our world
seems increasingly hard nosed, isn't it appropriate that galleries, even
the posh ones in places like Davies Street, are only as good as their
current exhibition? If so, being 60 is something that Gimple Fils might
have preferred to keep quiet.
There isn't anything in this at best full, some might
say crowded, exhibition which is in any particular way bad - in whatever
way value judgments such as good and bad may come across. It's just really
quite dull. Katrina, our enchanting and illustrious writer of book reviews,
has a rating system for books which considers their readability on the
tube. Perhaps this might be the time to introduce something for exhibitions
which considers how much of a trek it is worth making to see this exhibition.
While some exhibitions are worth travelling to from abroad, some would
only fall into a category: 'if you happen to be in town'. Gimple Fils
60th Anniversary Exhibition, I regret to say, falls into a category: 'if
you're passing and you're early and could do with killing five minutes'.
KM
art home
top of page
Love/Death: The Tristan Project
- Bill Viola
Haunch of Venison, Haunch of Venison Yard, W1 / Bond Street tube / Open
Mon to Fri, 10am - 6pm, Thu 10am - 7pm, and Sat 10am - 5pm / Free / Until
Sat 2 Sep
In Art Colleges, or at least when I was at Art College,
Video Art belonged to a category called Time Based Media. Most of these
titles are a load of guff but this one seems particularly accurate when
applied to Bill Viola's work. All of these video pieces are slowed down,
and all of them reward patience. I don't know if it helps to say that
to see this exhibition within a 'normal' period of time might be like
trying to get the gist of a film which is being played at fast-forward
speed, but you get the idea I'm sure.
Most of these pieces have their origins in a body of work
that Viola made for the Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde. I can't
say whether a knowledge of this opera would enrich the experience of the
exhibition. But I can say, as someone who has never seen an opera in his
life, that The Tristan Project gets across grand themes - life, death
and the transcendence of the physical body. It might all get a bit too
lofty or even earnest were it not for the fact that the screens, some
very large and some quite small, have a physicality in themselves. All
of the imagery has an attractiveness to it, some of it beautiful, some
of it curious. But in blunt mechanical terms, the most captivating characteristic
of Viola's work is that it moves. That is not to say however that the
allure of the moving image is somehow inferior to other means of captivating
an audience, and in Viola's case it is very cannily used. The images move
so slowly that we are unable to see the actual movements in some cases,
yet we are still aware that the images are moving.
As for a whether or not it's for everyone, Bill Viola
is very well known so it is not unreasonable to expect a regular gallery
goer to be aware of his previous work. Love/Death: The Tristan Project
is a very good Viola exhibition, so if you find his work interesting,
you should like this show. KM
art home
top of page
|
|
