- Venue
- Turf
- Location
‘Target Text', Turf's latest show, features new work by two London based artists, Vicki Kerr and Katie Cuddon. Turf is a relatively small gallery and it's therefore brave to present work by more than one artist within its semi-partitioned rooms. Particularly when the work is connected by contributory ideas rather than aesthetics. Upon entering the space it at first appears difficult to find a way of reading the exhibition, there seems no obvious thread to follow, conceptual or visual. On contemplating the title however, and extracting the narrative behind many of the works themselves, a representation of communication, or rather failed communication begins to emerge.
The term ‘target text' refers to a translation. An original document being the ‘source text'. The works in this show display the hit and miss element of translation and the laboured transferral of information. Katie Cuddons', Radio Cloud, is a rather melancholy object that hovers low to the ground, just above the skirting board, perhaps where one would expect a radiator to be. A clay cloud sits straddled between two pristine metal tubes, blocking any flow and yet clearly expecting to receive and give out; perhaps heat or messages? It attracts a sense of hope and one can't help watching it, checking on it, waiting for it to perhaps make an announcement, turn red, or even release itself from its bar and float upwards towards the ceiling where one would expect it to belong.
Adjacent to this misplaced Radio Could (Cloud-radio? Radiator? Radial?) is Vicki Kerr's Eva and the Wolf – a photographic piece displaying a series of stills taken from Eva Brauns' home videos of Hitler conversing as Adolf as opposed to the dictator. It seems an unlikely and incoherent juxtaposition of work, but on closer inspection we see that the text accompanying the stills (genuine dialogue extracted using recently developed lip- reading software) is cut out of white sugarpaste. The letters seem to hover off the aluminium-mounted prints and one half expects them to drift off the page or disintegrate like sugar lumps plopped into a cup of tea. Once again, concrete translation and interpretation is given a lightness and intangibility through the use, treatment and combination of materials.
Another clever combination of works can be found on first entering the gallery space. Cuddon's Untitled ‘sticks', red clay spears, painted white save a few missed patches, stand propped against the wall, precarious and yet threatening. They appear to be in the process of picking up information, as much as they are the white paint that conceals them. Their intention or function is not quite complete and yet perhaps they are also retiring from a function, one that demands pinning a target?
The references to hunting and primitive weaponry are supported by Kerr's piece which sits opposite. Baron and the Stag represents the story of a rich and gullible Baron who was tricked by his staff into thinking he shot a tear-away stag when in fact the stag had been sedated to facilitate a sweatless chase. Kerr illustrates the employee's laugh by dressing a pair of antlers with a plastercine camouflage. The imposing branches become animated by this amorphous, putty surface. But, just to emphasise the naïve receptiveness of the perceiver, the tips remain plastercine free. Exposed to resemble dancing fingernails. Looking into this dead, yet animated target, one suddenly gets the feeling it may be oneself, the viewer that is being mislead. It becomes unclear which lines of communication are truthful and which lies.
artist/writer
