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typewriters crashing to the ground, which seemed unconnected, but there may have been some reference to the passing of outdated technology and industry.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

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

PS1

	Dirty White Trash (With Gulls), 1998

Tim Noble & Sue Webster are famous for working with trash. They are famous for other things too, like getting on TV and telling an old couple to fuck off (on the life-swap programme ‘Living with the Enemy’), or for wearing leather jackets and looking like pop stars. As you might expect, lots of art people don't take too well to this kind of thing - their work was dismissed in many quarters as shallow gimmickry and over-simple attention seeking. "This is rubbish!" you imagine the oldster traditionalists screaming, arms thrown in the air in affected outrage, "is this what Art has become?" Of course, they have lots of fans too, who admire them for their faux-punk attitudes and take-no-shit style. Tim & Sue are second generation yBa's, shameless self-promoters, ligging and ad-libbing their way to success - one of their first notable pieces ("Hijack", 1994) was a series of fly-posters featuring their faces plastered over those of Gilbert & George accompanied by the words "Tim Noble, Sue Webster, The Simple Solution".

Forever, 2001

Tim and Sue operate using the language of trash and glamour, pop culture, neon, and kitschy romance. Their main body of work is built on their shadow sculptures – piles of everyday refuse painstakingly organised to cast detailed shadow self-portraits against the gallery wall. It’s an impressive craft. They also make neon signs, like Tracey Emins, but bigger and more Vegas. At PS1 their neon piece, spelling out the word “Forever”, dominated an entire room with its flickering blue-purple-red rhythmic pattern. There’s a kind of sentimentality about this work that is offset by the possibilty of it being ironic in some way. Forever how? Forever until someone takes the plug out when the exhibition comes down?

	Dollar Sign, 2001

There’s another neon piece in the shape of a ‘$’. It’s attractive, casting pretty light shapes onto the walls of the darkened space. It resists any immediate interpretation because of the ubiquity and blandness of the dollar symbol. It might not be the most revealing piece of work, but the tension between the attractice flashing lights and their possible meaninglessness is hypnotic. It holds your gaze even though you think maybe it's a bit shallow and simplistic. You can't help liking it as you walk away thinking "so what?"

"The New Barbarians" is a sculpture, from ages ago. It was conceived by Tim and Sue but the actual making was done by other people. This may really get some people's goat if they don't understand that having ideas and making them happen is an essential part of being an artist, regardless of whether you physically make anything. But maybe these kind of people would like 'The New Barbarians' anyway because it looks like a nice, well-made sculpture. The idea is simple. Two neanderthal figure amble towards you, naked, over-long arms dangling at their side. Their faces look like a Duane Hanson sculpture of Tim and Sue - that is, clearly recognisable but malformed to look odd.

The New Barbarians, 1997-99

The New Barbarians represent humans as crude, basic, animalistic, curious... they deflate the arrogance of the 'paragon of animals' view of humanity. But at the same time, these Barbarians are touching, walking out together, naked and brave. They are semi-formed, simplified creatures. This piece was made between 1997-99 - perhaps this is Tim and Sue's pre-millenial gesture, humanity walking onward in curiousity and ignorance. I can't help wondering if this work will be remembered in a few years as great, iconic art that really spoke of its time, or as the arse end of the yBa hype. I hope it's the former - beneath their deceptively flippant ego act, Tim and Sue are making some fascinating stuff.

© John Brainlove 2003

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Tim Noble and Sue Webster at PS1 October 12 – December 29, 2003
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, 22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Ave in Long Island City, 11101, New York

T: 718 784 2084
www.ps1.org

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Keith Tyson

A Tiny Bubble of Complexity

The South London Gallery is a little bit off the beaten track. Emerging blinking from the Oval tube you are confronted with a mosaic montage of cricket players in various poses, batting, bowling, catching, in green and white... then, outside, the Oval itself, imposing and slightly careworn. The number 36 bus runs on a busy line, bustling, always full, stopping and starting down the busy Peckham road.

But stepping into Keith Tyson's show is like stepping through the looking glass. The space is quiet despite its proximity to the busy street. It hums with the sound of show's centrepiece, a visually striking kinetic sculpture that spins twelve defined points through the space of the gallery/galaxy, constantly shifting, random but rhythmic and systematic, exploring a defined space but suggesting an vast amount of possibilities. "Field of Heaven Longshot Magnet" embodies a dichotomy that runs through many of the works in the exhibition and more than once brings to mind the noise and organised chaos of the city outside. And beyond - the moon turning around the earth turning around the sun, or the deep inner space rush of corpuscles and haemoglobin through our veins. There is a tension in this work in terms of scale and subject, systems and rules set against a backdrop of inconceivable disorder and perceptual limits. "Field of Heaven..." spins through a finite amount of space, and therefore must explore a finite amount of positions and correlation. But trying to follow these positions as they move is a mind bending experience that quickly becomes dizzying in scope.

On the far wall of the gallery lies a massive painting constructed of black, white and gray polygonal forms. The size and shape of the piece is echoed on the right wall by a similarly huge painting of the stars against the blackness of space, and to the left by the painting "Supercollider". Each is an exploration, or a conception, or an expression, or projection (?), each written it a recognisable language, each bending and twisting that language to illustrate it's potential limitations. The painting of the stars, entitled "A Night in a Billion", is accompanied in the catalogue by and equation. This equation begins by explaining that the painting consists of 12 panels that can be arranged in any order, and each panel turned to face any direction. It continues to work out the amount of possible permutations that this must entail (11,771,943,000,000 approx.). "How close an approximation of this view exists or has existed from some position out there?".

"Supercollider" consists of textual fragments written in a variety of sizes, fonts and colours, small images under and overlapping the text, splashes and drips of paint, all set against a bright yellow backdrop. The text is seemingly grasped out of thin air, memory, imagination, books, dreams, thought. "high blood pressure problems", "an exquisitely fashioned coronet", "repairing a dry stone wall", "the heat fluctuations inside a frying sausage", "the strokes", "33.07%". It soon becomes apparent that you will never be able to hold them all in your memory, or even read them all. And also that some all or none of them are probably happening while you stand there. It's been attempted before, but rarely so successfully as here... combined with the other pieces in the room, "Supercollider" shrinks and implodes the viewer with it's conceptual landscape of possibility and incompehendable mass.

There is, of course, much more I could say about this show. Tyson would probably say an infinite number of things. But suffice to say that it is a must see exhibition of very contemporary art.

© John Brainlove 2002

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Keith Tyson at South London Gallery Jan 16th - Mar 17th 2002

South London Gallery, 65 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH

T: +44 (0)20 7703 6120

www.southlondongallery.org

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Paul McCarthy

Cultural Soup at Tate Liverpool

Paul McCarthy is probably the most well known performance artist in the world. He is most well known for his use of outrageous and horrific imagery in his more recent performances than for the undeniable influence he has had on modern performance and installation art. This exhibition is a comprehensive retrospective bringing together works from the early 1970's through to the late 1990's, and is one of the largest shows he has ever done.

The first thing I see (before I have even paid to enter the show) is a video of McCarthy smearing a baby doll with mayonnaise and repeating the phrase "the son begets the daddy, and the daddy begets the son" ("Cultural Soup", 1987). Little do I know that this is nothing compared to the surreal Freudian horrors yet to come.

There are four other videos in the exhibition, mixed with sculptures and installations of the sets used in the videos. There are also framed photographs documenting McCarthy's earlier performances, including some fairly shocking images of a staged performance in which McCarthy is smeared in ketchup as he gives birth to a headless doll from an oversized prosthetic vagina. Like many of his works it is deeply disturbing and yet strangely comical.

Then there are the sculptures - a man with a giant rabbit's head and disproportionately large genitals ("Spaghetti Man", 1993), a plastic figure of Pinocchio in bed ("Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma", 1994) and an old man trying to copulate with a hole in a barrel ("Alpine Man", 1992). Again, these are quite disturbing, but also very funny. There is a continued usage of deviant sexual practices and childhood imagery, which combined form an obviously unsettling combination.

It becomes impossible not to ask why Paul McCarthy himself is not considered to be insane, particularly when faced with videos of the artist dressed as a boxer, smeared in ketchup, punching himself around the head and masturbating ("Rocky", 1976) and laughing uncontrollably as he draws pictures of genitals and repeatedly asks "what's this?" ("Bossy Burger", 1991). The answer to this question is clear, McCarthy does not desire to perform these so-called deviant acts for pleasure, but for the sake of art. His perceived insanity is what makes his performances so interesting.

There is a piece of work that stands out as the most linear, easily understandable performance in the show and this is the film "Painter" (1995). McCarthy plays the role of a frustrated abstract expressionist who has huge hands and ears and a giant bulbous nose, which exaggerate his awkwardness. He speaks in a squeaky cartoon voice and tries to tell the viewer how to paint ("you mix the red with the blue?"). But every so often he breaks down and starts muttering himself "I can't do this anymore, fuck all painting, fuck all painting". Later on in the performance he argues with his agent about money and tries out self-harm as a way of getting public attention (by hilariously/horrifically chopping his fake hand off). This piece is obviously deriding the somewhat pretentious view that art critics had of the tormented artist, such as Pollock or De Kooning, who are admired for their neuroses as much as they are for their art.

Through the role of the deviant, the madman, and the artist, McCarthy's works reach into the gut of the human psyche and revealed our deepest and darkest desires. Sometimes horrific and often comical, these performances are as disconcerting as they are fascinating.

© The Happy Woman 2001

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Paul McCarthy at Tate Liverpool 19 October 2001 - 13 January 2002.

Tate Liverpool, Albert Dock, Liverpool. L3 4BB

T: +44 (0)151 702 7400)

www.tate.org.uk

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