Last of the Urgents

Colony's new curated group show coincided with the launch of their book As if something once mentioned, now plain to see

One wall of the show was united by Jo Mitchell's wall painting, a snaking path linking nightmarish drawings by Nikolas Arvanitis and dreamy paintings by GL Brierley.

I didn't catch who made the kitsch/baroque confection in the middle of the room, but I did have to use my cameraphone to see the decorative money inside.

The quietly disturbing exhibition seemed to be less appealing to the audience than the bar and music in the book launch, but there was some powerful stuff here, that wormed its way into my head and set up home in the mouldering ruins of art.

Colony

Being & Drunken Boat

I've been struggling to get to blog, so thought I'd put these two shows together, a quick comparison perhaps.

Being by Damián Ortega at Ikon Eastside

Smooth, buttery curls of locally sourced copper rolls, some were slightly lost in the large space, but a couple of pieces were strong on their own. Perhaps it would have been nice to see a Tate Britain Turbine Hall treatment, with a vast sea of copper filling the space. There was also a video by Ortega of typewriters crashing to the ground, which seemed unconnected, but there may have been some reference to the passing of outdated technology and industry.

Drunken Boat at Colony

Casey & McAree's Fucked Arc dominates this show (a curatorial intervention across the 2 rooms at COLONY, creating a version in cardboard of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc). I'd heard it was going to be even more awkward to get around, but they'd left a gap to get to the loo (too kind of them in my opinion)

Most of the sculpture was fairly lo-fi, humerous work, although Grex Cox's formica clad furniture (right, above) had a slightly more self-contained presence to it.

These exhibitions are examples of the current popularity of sculpture in Birmingham, despite having different ways of approaching the form, they share a slight sadness at their heart, as if responding to loss and impotence. I'm not sure if I prefer the fairly formal, traditional approach of Being with its subtle references to local industry; or the more overt use of populist imagery and familiar materials in Drunken Boat. I can't help but think that the return to an interest in objects is a sign of the increasing retreat to more commercial possibilities in the current art climate, and I hope that there will still be a place for works that challenge people to change what is going on around them, not just mourn it.

Larger versions on my Flickr page