- Venue
- Ovada
- Location
How is it possible to ‘locate’ the point or points at which meaning can be made in an artwork? Chinnery’s exhibition deals with ‘locations’ in its broadest context, spanning issues within discourses of post-colonial history – including concerns such as cultural identity, displacement and global warming. Questions raised include: who has the power to make meaning and what mechanisms are in operation that set the ‘boundaries’ through which representations may be conducted?
One example in this complex and engaging exhibition is 100 Christian Martyrs – an artwork that both directly and indirectly deals with these ideas of Power and meaning. It consists of a densely packed row of 100 mini-statuettes made from wooden dolly clothes pegs. The faces and bodies have been drawn and created in a child-like manner. Each martyr statuette has been individually ‘tagged’ with a description of the way in which he or she was brutally and gruesomely tortured and killed. Some of the statuettes have been beheaded – the heads held by pipe-cleaner arms. Others have had more elaborate mutilations: bodies chopped in half, eyes gorged. The overall presentation of these statuettes exhibits a childlike fascination with genitalia, as well as a sinister preoccupation with the gruesome and violent.
The shelf that they sit upon is sculptural in itself, reminiscent of one of Donald Judd’s pieces. This is key. The artist has intentionally mimicked the form of a high art Minimalist sculpture in order to probe how such a work might be ‘read’. Which element of the artwork has the most ‘clout’ in terms of its reception? Is it the subject matter of the Christian martyrs, whose implied narrative is forcefully engaging? Does the high art ‘status’ of a Minimalist sculpture recede into insignificance because it has been attributed the functional role of a shelf? In fact, does the work's meaning change depending on the timing of its presentation. It was first exhibited a number of years ago but in the present time, following recent events in world history, the signification changes posing new questions in relation to how today’s narratives of religious martyrdom might be viewed, perceived and registered.
Other works which query the hierarchies and dynamics that permit dominant structures to flourish are L’Ultima cena con funghi (The Last Supper with Mushrooms) and Cuculus Prospectus: A Biological Expansion. In particular, L’Ultima cena con funghi (The Last Supper with Mushrooms) subverts the language of science. It consists of a series of twelve framed images of fungus that are distinctly phallic in appearance. A Victorian mode of framing (the use of the oval shape) has been utilised to ‘contain’ the images. Once again Chinnery adopts an ironic strategy in orchestrating her compositions: framing the phallic-scientific imagery within the quintessentially twee narrative convention of Victoriana. Her subtle use of humour confronts the viewer with their assumptions about knowledge and its dissemination – a question perhaps even more pertinent today when knowledge sits side-by-side opinion in ever increasing media outlets.
