The fridge looks nothing like my fridge. In truth it is more like a “dark mirror”, a “walled garden” or a “monstrous insect”, all comparisons made by an anguished, robotic first person voiceover.
Manufacturers Samsung surely realise they are in the business of fabricating metaphors. How else could they justify a $1,799 price tag for a basic function which could cost you less than 100 notes.
To make their point, they’ve painted it black. The 30 cubic foot machine comes in the same colour as a limo. Its resemblance to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey goes without saying.
Flanking Plasma screens build on this cosmic potential by juxtaposing the fridge with, at one point, a soup of fossilised sludge and, at another, the Northern Lights.
Animated coolant passes through the condenser, narrated with reference to the moon and the sun. Like a cruel god, the machine is said to “torment” and “humiliate” the liquid.
Our own hunger for the hi-tech is suggested by a cropped shot of the artist’s knees, rubbed in anticipation as lavish food shots fill the background behind the immobile, yet sentient unit.
The fridge onscreen soon attains more presence than the fridge in the room. After 20 minutes, the real thing starts looking very finite against the gallery’s green screen infinity cove.
Less affluent folk would normally come across this appliance on an advert or as a piece of aspirational product placement in a movie. Our present view from behind the camera punctures that.
In fact the more reverence which smooth marketeers and satisfied customers give to their smart goods, the funnier this piece becomes. Because green screen action cuts both ways.
Mark Leckey: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE is at Serpentine Gallery until 26 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. If you’re thinking of buying the fridge, it’s a Samsung RFG293HABP.
Although there may be no candles in these painted scenes, there is arguably candlelight. There is certainly romance and the echoes of a nocturnal interior by, say, Georges de la Tour.
And in this light the vulnerable nudes, of which there are three, also call to mind Rembrandt. It may be worked out they are Ben Ashton’s wife. Other panels show them together and him at work.
But whereas a gilt frame might invite you in to an intimate scene by a baroque master, Ashton has crafted three-dimensional wood panels which throw these domestic scenes into relief.
Six of the paintings are on trapezoid blocks which look like inversions of sacred icons. Three are on roundels or plaques which look designed for the exterior of a building, not a gallery wall.
These intimate scenes have not been casually thrust upon us. The rightmost panel shows the artist hard at work sawing and planing the rest of the piece. But he looks unaware of the end result.
The leftmost panel shows his wife (we can work out the relation between them) bent over a screen. It is one of the nudes, lit by the glow of a laptop rather than a secretive 17th century candle.
It is tempting to say that here it is the internet which has turned the modern home inside out. But painters have long revealed their interior life and the life of their interiors.
In the flanking panels of this installation, Ashton appears to set the old and new technologies in opposition. Perhaps that is why in a self portrait in panel eight he looks so full of doubt.
But since each element of this wall is titled with a day of the week and a time from the 24hr clock, it suggests he too embraces digital technology. Just as in panel three he embraces his wife.
As this all suggests, the piece has a creeping sense of drama. Two of the most engaging panels show the pair denuding themselves with, respectively face cream and shaving foam.
In other words, it is a soap opera. Where painters once used candlelight to heighten the pictorial drama, in a digital age they can (must?) use irony and art historical references.
Ben Ashton’s work can be seen in group show Shifting Boundaries at Phoenix, Brighton, until 12 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. And read an interview with the artist on london art.
You are in the HEROIN ROOM. You can see: a painting, a broken chair, a lighter and some tin foil. There are exits: SE, SW. What do you want to do? _
That’s not meant to be the worst dropped intro ever written, but a faithful reproduction of the game-like dynamics of one of Mike Nelson’s most labyrinthine works.
Because for visitors of a certain age, making their way through the 14 rooms here is reminiscent of the text-based adventures which came on 80s computers. What do you see? Which way next?
The video game experience seems fully intended. Somewhere near the heart of The Coral Reef is a vintage arcade machine, an obscure platformer called Black Magic.
And there is something magical about the way you can interact with this work, and certainly something dark about the world which Nelson has created. Yet it’s as comic as pixels and bleeps.
These days, seventh generation console games let you explore virtual worlds in ways we could not have dreamed of. But none compare with Nelson’s sculpture for potential suspended disbelief.
So this blogger even went so far as to spend 15 disoriented minutes making a map. It looks a bit like a medieval mappa mundi, and it does contain spoilers, but get in touch if you’d like a pdf.
All I can say is it was a shock to find so many political, religious and cultural extremists were living in such proximity. If we can get lost in a sculpture, we stand no chance in the world at large.
Unsurprisingly, this is one of the most blogged about pieces of art I have come across. For some good photos, check out Corinna Spencer’s.
The Coral Reef can be seen as part of Tate Britain’s current display of Contemporary Acquisitions. And the gallery advise you to check it’s on view before visiting (or you could live dangerously).
From the pencil shavings and strewn magazines on the floor, it looks something like Maxime Angel has been living in the gallery. Indeed, there are reports she has slept on several works.
She may even have slept inside the containerboard on the wall. The gallery assistant tells me the college-trained artist was also for a period of time a rough sleeper. Cardboard was canvas.
Other details suggest Maxime is not exactly the girl next door. Visitors are confronted with the dark energy of a range of illustrated cocks and may spot two graphic all male orgy scenes.
A spot of (desk) research confirms the artist is transgender, and HIV positive. So the lead-blunting skulls here are not just for effect. The memento mori have been lived in as well.
Take away the biography and you would still have a show with charge. What it might lack in imagination and finesse, it makes up for with desire and suffering. No press release needed.
But the life story will still impress. Angel sounds like an outlaw. Her exposure to life on the streets and a deadly pandemic are among factors which might just authenticate this work.
Otherwise, it could still be said the show is a worthy example of an artistic tradition which dates back to the Salon des Refusés. It is powerful either way; too strong if anything.
Let My Eyes Be Your Mirror is at Centre for Recent Drawing, London, until 17 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. There’s a brief but interesting Q&A with the artist in Dazed Digital.
Lights which flash in time with music will be familiar to anyone under the age of about 80. They are the trappings of a nightclub or rock concert. They gear people up for action.
It seems appropriate that younger folk take drugs, get drunk and seek out intensities like this on a Saturday night. But it feels wrong for me to be here, sober, on a Friday lunchtime.
Light tubes hang from the ceiling and flicker to a building rhythm. At given interludes, they offer an illuminated pause as if waiting for you. They are alive and it is a trip.
While white cube galleries promote measured contemplation, blacked-out Phoenix is currently a dark cube, giving rise to late night or subterranean impulses.
It is like being the first to arrive at a stark, atonal disco. The space is defined by dangerous strobing and noise. There’s that same libidinous rush, just no dancing, no bar, no sex.
But maybe dancing etc is the scourge of the modern nightspot. Sound/light installations like this suggest there could be other agendas or other uses for the dark. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Brightonians may want to hurry along to Phoenix because the current show closes tomorrow. Intrinsic by Angie Atmadjaja is one of three works in Actuate My Void. See gallery website for more details.
There is something unholy going on, although it is not clear quite what, and there was nothing about bones and hair in the manifesto for the show.
“Voodoofesto,” Melissa Logan corrects me.
Stacks of folded t-shirts are laid out on a white shelf. The logos say Chanel, but the slogans add “voodoo”. I look around at gold bones, a staff with a head of hair and a skull in a makeshift water feature, submerged.
Logan (alias Coco Cartier and founder member of Chicks on Speed) is as sharp as her orange painted nails. Her collaborator Nadine Jessen (alias Ezili Lagerfeld) is more shadowy, and indeed eye-shadowy. Even I can see they are well dressed.
“It’s a project that started in Abidjan in Ivory Coast from these friends who were there and they saw graffiti on a wall at a market in Abo-abo,” says Logan.
She tells me the Voodoo Chanel project spread from a to cafes, gigs and art venues around the world. The Voodoofesto is a call to hijack the world’s luxury brands, and one way to do so is to purchase one of the T-shirts or bags.
“You can bring money and friends…” laughs Jessen, and her German accent gives the proposal an edge.
Asked about their choice of target, Chanel, the duo fall over themselves to convey a real excitement about the brand.
“They invest an extreme amount into their fashion shows,” says Logan.
“It is really decadent,” Jessen confirms.
Logan: “They brought an iceberg over, for example, from Greenland. They shipped over an iceberg for the Grand Palais show.”
Jessen, in disbelief: “They had a whole orchestra playing live for the music.”
This mixture of energy and elitism is what the current show hopes to chan(n)el back into street, or even the underground.
Logan adds: “And Voodoo Chanel is also because voodoo is something very scary for the people who buy Chanel and, yes, they have a reason to be afraid.”
There is laughter all round, mine being of the nervous variety. When Logan takes a call, Jessen offers me a tour of the darkest recess of the show, a narrow room which looks something like a shrine, except there are bottles of spirits and – my word! – a 10” long phallus sculpted from wood.
“It’s an altar and a bar,” Jessen explains. “Ja, we have some specials, some Russian cocaine, but we also start to set up an aphrodisiac but this has to sit for one week so then you have to come back in one week and then you can get a bit.”
“It’s like in fashion and also like in voodoo there are these rules but you can’t read them, and so it’s also kept secret and that’s why voodoo is also in a way elitist,” she adds more seriously. “So we really try hard to make it a little poppy and to make a possibility for sharing it.”
Jessen patiently explains that Russian cocaine is a cocktail. “It’s medicinal,” says a voice behind me. Logan is back.
“We just do cocktails and water – that’s it, you know. Like, what is the term for Rausch?” Jessen asks her.
“Rausch is like to get into a state.”
“Like a trip, so this is like medicine to help you.”
“To get into a state,” Logan clarifies.
By which point I’m clinging to my sobriety very tightly. Steering the conversation into safer territory, I ask about the procurement of the many diverse materials in what, pop-up shop and temple aside, is also a stunning mixed media installation.
“Some of it’s real, some of it’s fake, some of it’s local, some of it’s from really, really exotic places,” says Logan.
“It’s really growing, you know, so when we go somewhere and when we meet people and we talk to people and they bring stuff and we find stuff or stuff finds us,” Jessen adds.
Logan: “Some of the things we don’t even know what they are because we brought them at markets and they’re like medicines that are supposed to do different things.”
“There’s one thing I nearly forgot. Shall I show you?” Jessen’s offer sounds ominous.
We part the trailing curtains and move back into the gloomy bar. The German clicks a lighter and sets two green candles ablaze. Logan watches as she reaches into a pot and takes out a cellophane sock filled with an unidentified herb.
“This.” she announces. “I have no idea anymore what this is.”
Logan just remembers you boil it. Next the pair coax me into sniffing a dubious looking granular substance. Hmm, woody.
“And this…” Logan continues, “if you put this one in someone’s tea then they’re going to obey you and do whatever you want them to do.”
At my lame suggestion that some of that might come in useful in an office, Logan says with dead seriousness: “Yeah!”
“But be careful that it’s just one person,” Jessen warns me.
Next I am persuaded to taste a chip of something I am told is “like” dried ginger. This tastes like bark. And the women exchange comments, in German.
“This is from the barber,” says Jessen pointing at the wall behind me. My eyes widen slightly at a giant Chanel logo made out of human hair.
“Here’s the last thing though,” says Logan. “We do have Karl.”
Naturally, she now produces a voodoo doll of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld. He is tied up with sandalwood beads and I am assured these are for a healing spell. When I point out they look like teeth, the artist merely agrees.
“Yeah,” she says. “It looks brutal.”
On my way out the door, I peer at some newspaper taped to a wall. A full page taken from that day’s Guardian recounts the murder of seven women in a protest march. It took place in Ivory Coast. The paper bears today’s date. Spooky indeed.
This piece was written for Culture24. Voodoo Chanel can be seen at Grey Area, Brighton, until March 27 2011. See gallery website for more details.
Mary Kelly Projects 1973-2010, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Photo (c) KP Photo 2011
According to a 2003 book, there were 3.6 million Anderson Shelters in use during WWII. They must have been a common sight, as common as catching a glimpse of your parents having sex.
Mary Kelly, b.1941, has spoken of the War as a political ‘primal scene‘ for people of her generation. And so into this sculptural shelter are carved the wartime memories of eight of her contemporaries.
These are best read in the mirrored floor of the structure. So you have to get the angle right to read the lived experience of war, although they are no less real for that.
These memories have also punctured their stainless steel surrounds. Clearly these arrangements for protecting the next generation were only a partial success.
And because the whole piece is reflective, atrocities such as the Holocaust or Hiroshima may yet be written on our own faces, dress, comportment, whatever our age and distance from the war.
Witnessing this violence at whatever remove may lead to anger, confusion and a desire for revenge. If this was a Freudian case study, you could explain the events of May ’68 this way.
But you might also wonder about your own political primal scenes. These will depend on your age and location, but chances are you can remember the terrors of your own childhood shelter.
Habitus forms part of Mary Kelly: Projects, 1973-2010, which is on show at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until June 12. See gallery website for more details and read my review of the show on Culture24 here.
Good news comes by phone, as the old adage goes. It has even been said more recently that it’s good to talk. So visitors to Carey Young’s show may already be keen to pick up this phone.
In a gallery context it promises even more excitement. As Alex Farquharson points out in a highly informative essay about the artist, such a device recalls a well-known moment in conceptual art.
(The 1969 landmark exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, which included a telephone on the floor. Artist Walter de Maria would occasionally call.)
In this case we make the call, and after a brief ringtone the line goes through to an automated call centre system. And no matter how much enjoy art, it is hard not to hang up.
The impersonal voice offers multiple options which let you access field recordings from the 2009 G20 protests in London. You can hear a range of chants, interviews, ambient noises and a speech.
In one clip a passerby states that the atmosphere on the demo is “imbued with love”. But all of the fervour and the spirit of the event has been put at a safe distance by the hated interface.
But then again, most mediation of the anti-globalisation movement is to some extent corporate. We are free to hop channels, switch papers, etc, but is it not all programmed?
In the context of this somewhat kitsch office set, that may seem funny. Perhaps the best we can do is laugh at our predicament.
Tooling presses once used to manufacture a dream sports car of the 1980s are now to be found 18m below sea level, a habitation for crabs, sea cucumbers and a lobster. This is not a metaphor.
A metaphor would be the 1981 commercial for the DeLorean DMC-12 which showed the car by the ocean with both gull-wing doors open. This image dissolved into a shot of an actual gull in flight.
We have long been familiar with happenings in life which get called stranger than fiction. But this installation is comprised of real world objects which appear more wondrous than art.
There are photos of submerged cast iron presses, together with crabs, taken by industrial divers. And the stainless steel body parts from a DMC-12 were made by a vintage car restorer.
Admittedly, both forms of evidence were commissioned by artist Sean Lynch. So the first becomes a conceptual photograph and the second a contemporary sculpture.
And yet biomarine surveys are conducted in Kilkieran Bay and there are many DeLorean owners who lovingly maintain their vehicles. So the works also display what might be called the poetry of fact.
You may be wondering why part of a car factory is submerged off the coast of Galway. The fact is, after DeLorean went bankrupt, fishermen were among those who brought up the scrap.
The presses became anchors for fish farms, which themselves are no longer economically viable. So as you can see from its Progress Report, the DeLorean is going nowhere fast.
You can download a .pdf of the car’s Progress Report from the artist’s website, here. And read an indepth feature on the project written by Kevin Barry in the Dublin Review.
It costs 10p to play. When you plug your money in the coinslot, five speakers strike up an orchestral version of The Star Spangled Banner. The speakers are black and shaped like coffins.
This seems like an attack on video game culture. For some £30-40 you can buy highly realistic battle simulators such as Call of Duty or Medal of Honour. Play all you like.
Chances are you will be fighting on the side of the Americans, but are we all not doing likewise every time we participate in the free market economy. It is not too much of a jump from spending pounds and pence on light entertainment to also propping up the military-industrial complex.
We do not, of course, have a choice. Hence perhaps the cynicism of Giuseppe Stampone‘s work. It is completely unadorned, functional in an ugly way. It knows you will not be able to resist.
We could try and walk away, check out some of the other great work at Phase 5, but all the rest also has its place in the market. They are all to some extent sideshows. Perhaps the very wars referenced here are themselves a sideshow, a distraction from the play of high finance.
Play can be seen until Novermber 27 at Phase 5, a No Longer Empty exhibition, which forms part of the Liverpool Biennial. See Biennial website for further details.
