Filed under: Comment & Opinion, Contemporary Art, Exhibition Reviews | Tags: art, curator, Heath Bunting, Idiot Curators, idiots, Jenny Holzer, Job Centre plus, Leeds City Art Gallery, Mark Lombardi, Mark Titchner, Mustafa Hulusi, P45, PSL, Rank, Rory Macbeth, Victor Burgin, Whitechapel Art Gallery, William Powell Frith
Do you have any transferable skills?
Rank, adj
1. Having a very strong and bad odor.
2. Something which is disgusting.
3. Complete, used as an intensifier.
Slang; disgusting, ugly. E.g.”Have you seen Bill’s new girlfriend? She’s rank!”
There is a faint smell of some thing gone off wafting through the cherished halls of the Leeds City Art Gallery. It is the careers of the curators of the latest installment in the continuously disappointing gallery programme. Not that this Blog wishes to make any enemies within the Leeds arts intellgensia (who us?!), but the current show Rank: Picturing The Social Order 1615-2009 is so SHOCKINGLY BAD that the curators should soon be meeting their P45s in a dark Leeds alley. This show is not unfortunately concerned with the disgusting rotting corpses of unemployed curators, alas- “This fascinating and unusual exhibition, which looks at how artists have pictured the shape of society from Renaissance times to the present, A society without stratification is barely imaginable, but how do we picture our own system of hierarchies, of difference?…” How indeed.
This show contains way too many pieces of work, with over 100 pieces it is overwhelming. Frustratingly the ‘only as good as the worst piece in it’ virus has struck with the decent artworks lost in a small sea of crap artworks competing within an ocean of ‘helpful realisations’. Statistical visual representations on wealth and class in the UK so misguided it includes a hideous shirt ‘graph’ depicting the classifications of UK age population via a differing shirt fabric that corresponds to a demographic category. P45!
Other cringe worthy examples of institutional patronising include maps of wealth across the world in swirly colors and (let them eat) cake ‘pie charts’-more statistics, more waste. P45! Turning statistics into commissioned pieces of 3D artwork. P45! The show is about class and rank and those statistics are, yes interesting and indeed relevant but this is essentially RESEARCH and this is essentially an ART GALLERY. Except we don’t want our art galleries to be art galleries we want them to be educational places, accessible places, innovative places. Whilst this isn’t a bad thing for art galleries to be there is always the danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.In the case of the Leeds City Art Gallery that baby would, it appears, also have to be spoon fed and now lies out front with the passing traffic.
There are some amazing works in here, works which do convey their points and do provide a document of the attitudes to wealth and class. Except the juxtaposition between the contemporary works and the ‘helpful realisations’ is so hideously stark they’re subdued. You can still feel the cringes of the artists as they dutifully turned up to the private view and tried to restrain the impulse to not smash their glass of cheap Chardonnay in to the stupid FUCKING FACE OF THE IDIOT CURATORS! Mustafa Hulusi’s ‘Possession’ shoved in a corner so far away from the Victor Burgin work it is supposedly in ‘conversation’ with that they are practically on non speaking terms. P45! Mark Titchner’s double-sided print ‘No Them Only Us’ has a huge presence in one of the rooms, but loses any impact for being surrounded by other works covering the walls like a regular old jumble sale. P45! Heath Bunting’s ‘The Status Project’, a 10 year long research project looking at the types of public identity data held by businesses and government agencies is relevant, but would have been better left alone, looking as it does like a crap and unconsidered version of a Mark Lombardi map. P45!
Mark Titchner, No Them Only Us, 2008
There are some Job Centre plus points – ‘Derby Day’ by William Powell Frith (1856) illustrating the mix of classes at the time: poor in the middle at the front of the frame, with the rich around them, higher up, keeping their distance, not a lot changes, but a gorgeous meaty piece of proper painting. Jenny Holzer’s text piece, floating above one of the gallery doors and Rory Macbeth’s crash barriers ‘Re-enactment #2′ (though they would be far more ambiguous and intriguing without the annoying penchant for BIG gallery labelling. P45!), and his soundpiece ‘Fanfare for the common man’ within the foyer…but alas none of it is enough to stop the rank stench.
This stinking pile of curatorial dog shit fills these hallowed pages so you don’t have to waste your time puking your metaphorical guts up through your metaphorical nose and stinging your beautiful art loving eyes. Instead spend your valuable time as this hot tip for Leeds art-goers – make the trip to PSL to see <195 miles>a Joint exchange project developed by PSL and the Whitechapel which showcases collaborative art works made by the 8 artists all from Leeds and London See it before it ends, see some work, grab an optional informative gallery map and enjoy letting your minds wander whilst savouring the fresh smell of young creative juices….
Rank: Picturing The Social Order 1615-2009, The Leeds City Art Gallery, 14 February – 26 April 2009 (as we feel nothing but disdain – there is no link)
<195 Miles>, PSL, Leeds, 17 December 2008 – 28 February 2009
the only good one is a dead one 
Filed under: Comment & Opinion, Contemporary Art, Exhibition Reviews | Tags: Barbican, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Coffin, sculpture, The Curve
Yes, taken on a bloody mobile!
The Barbican deserves an arse-licking. Amongst the smotherings of the city’s suits its Brutalist concrete village and confusing internal architecture give a good welcome slap; an ideal preparation for seeing art. Although their exhibitions are often brilliant but pricey, the free and accessible Curve downstairs has been host to a consistent and varied range of commissions, the current Peter Coffin installation particularly worth visiting.
Unusual and laudable too that the Barbican doesn’t spoil its shows with dozens of meaningless installation shots on the website, although this video is a juicy taster. An array of Coffin’s past video works and informative text provides a context for those unfamiliar with the New York based artist, since this is his first major UK project and runs concurrently with his projected animations at the Tate Triennial.
The installation at the Curve breaks down into three constituent parts. The swooping outer wall is divided into screen-sized projection areas, where woozy videos in vivid tones show a swirling collaged viewpoint around a garden. The rest of the space is dark with selective lighting, and speakers spaced far apart emit surprise sounds of somebody whistling as they stroll, or so says the press release. It’s more like nutty birds or a Clangers tune in its harmonic irrationality, and in tandem with the videos’ huge portion of the space create a mood difficult to describe as anything other than ‘trippy’. Not as in the perpetuated cliché of monkeys in hats or trousers on wheels, but a genuinely bizarre and disorientating assault on the senses.
Better than nothing surely
Scattered through the long narrow space are also a dozen or so pairs of plinths with a real recognizeable object sitting on one of each: there’s a skull, a trumpet and a compass for starters. Alongside, a companion plinth proffers greyish pixellated and crystalline sculptures of their real counterparts. These non identical twins invite spot the difference – a shoe becomes a foetus, a trumpet develops a teeny tiny mouth piece and a skull is turned inside out.
A chubby vase of flowers is both satisfying and repulsive, looking something like a pile of swollen guts. Think of Claes Oldenburg‘s ridicule of function in his floppy sculptures and elegant drawings, laughing at the objects’ deformation as they take on complex and absurd logic through their own rules. It’s explicit in the presentation of coupled plinths that the readymade has been scanned and excreted into odd misshapen lumps in a specific way unique to each sculpture.
The rules applied are not necessarily important in and of themselves, as the press release almost articulates in stating “for Peter Coffin, art is an alternative to rational thought” although I’d add that they aren’t mutually exclusive. The implication of ‘experts’ often comes across as an authoritative correctness that can make art look like a shrunken second fiddle to the rules of Science. This is avoided here through the mathematician’s collaboration with Coffin and their rationale to the modifications explained in a booklet at the gallery entrance, rather than running commentary or text throughout the installation itself.
You might guess that the crushed Budweiser can has been made into 3D double vision and the pine cone has been seen through a Rubiks cube, but it isn’t the explanation for why they are so formally arresting. It’s enough that they are playful and imaginative explorations, engaging and complicated.