- Venue
- LIMBO arts ltd
- Location
Ship of Fools
Substation, Margate 21st June – 12th July 2008
A Limbo Arts Production curated by Patricia Wilson Smith
Taking inspiration from a 15th Century best seller ‘Ship of Fools’ by Sebastian Brant, Patricia Wilson Smith has curated a show that works powerfully on the imagination.
For the purpose of this exhibition the artists considered the concept of ‘Ship of Fools’ as a metaphor for the human condition and also in the light of Foucault’s speculations on ‘heterotopias’ or places where social rules & expectations are waived in favour of another way of being. The artists propose this ‘other place’ to be our imagination, our tendency to weave stories around our commonplace experience, our ability to fantasise.
Pat brought together 9 artists from different disciplines and with her sensitive use of the space allowed each piece of work to co-exist and retain it’s strength.
The viewer is drawn around the space in an anti-clockwise direction as Andrew Dodds’ audio piece (Adrift) drips into one’s consciousness, a voice repeats ‘falling’ at intervals making one feel as adrift as Andrew Walter’s ink drawing of a starved & bandaged skeleton, jaw clamped shut bobbing in a tin tub full of fish. The rhythm of water, ebb & flow, is reflected in Steve McPherson’s ‘Objects lost – objects found – objects lost – objects found’ a large timber box brimming with plastic detritus that can be found on tide lines across the world, he has logged them in a funny & poignant narrative (‘…part of a pen that had never written poetry…no. 37270 the Smartie lid that held the sweets that bribed us…no.37292 a fragment of a lighter that started the fire on the cliff edge..)
Velika Janceva’s painting ‘Invasion’ has taken the displacement of objects to the extreme in a disquieting & curious piece. She depicts a world where all objects seem to have been swept into a giant landfill with a boat or ark that spews objects leaving blank buildings bleak and empty in it’s path surveyed by a giant square building on robot legs.
We voyage deeper with John Stark’s beautiful, dark ‘The Collector’ we are stagnant & cold in the river overgrown with trees looking on as the ferryman reels in dead bodies while the sun rises or sets (we’re held in a moment which isn’t clear) temptingly warm & hopeful in the distance.
Behind a ramshackle boat construction by Limbo Arts, Laura Smith projected a square edge of sea onto the floor which seemed to pull away from one’s feet, lulling & dizzying, concealing and revealing the floor below, seagull cries from the Seafront outside intersperse with the recorded narrative of a fantasy world.
Crouching to view, Natalie Bikoro’s ‘Volcano’ transports us to a distinctly ‘other place’ where veiled androgynous figures carry out subservient actions in a dusty crater that could be on another planet the images & soundtrack set up a dialogue in the viewers mind as one dissembles the symbolism.
Jon Fawcett’s world (‘Wheel’) traverses a rural hilly landscape. We’re always kept at a distance always the outsider. We follow three men, alien to the landscape in their city shirts & trousers. As our frustration at being excluded increases, they repeat their activity across the landscape, engrossed in their possibly pointless task and the immediate importance of it oblivious to their surroundings.
The exhibition was drawn to a close on the final day with a new work by Eva Weaver, transforming the space with layers of film projection, sound, object, water & performance evoking spirit boat journeys from the shamanic tradition leaving traces of her actions which were like a drawing in motion.
This stirring combination of ‘other worlds’ worked their way into my subconscious and that night I dreamt invisible hands where levitating me attempting to pull my body under perhaps into another world….?
Review by Jane Pitt, Artist based in Chatham, Kent
Pat & Jane met on the NAN/Fabrica Artist as Social Entrepreneur networking trip to Lille, in Feb 2008.
