- Venue
- P3, University of Westminster
- Location
- London
I woke up this morning with toothache. Should I go to the Kinetica Art Fair or make an emergency appointment with the dentist? Rashly, I chose the former. If I didn’t go now, I’d miss it completely and the dentist will still be there next week.
I made my way to London and Marylebone Road. Walking down towards the space that houses P3 the first thing I saw was a milk float with loads of junk on the back of it that looked so funny it made me laugh (Milk Float, Jump Ship Rat). It made everyone laugh. It was a brilliant piece by Ben Parry and Jacques Chauchat, an alluring Frenchman with infectious enthusiasm. A photo of their work would not do it justice but their website (www.jumpshiprat.org) has videos of their pieces. If you want to be cheered up on a cold February day, have a look at this and I bet you won’t be able to keep a straight face. It’s a modern day Tinguely and a point about mindless, rampant consumerism is aptly made.
Once inside the exhibition I was approached by a limping chair. It stood between me and a pair of Ronnie Barker glasses that were slowly dismantling themselves then piecing themselves back together (Tom Wilkinson, Square Dance). Fortunately the creepy chair seemed to have its eye on someone else (it did have eyes) and wandered slowly past without stopping. On my right a series of tiny screens all showing the same butterfly waited for someone to walk by to trigger their movement. A tree was drawing itself (Margaret Michel, The Tree). Mobiles were everywhere, but they always are at kinetic exhibitions and I take them for granted, rightly or wrongly. That is until I saw Screen Cloud by Jason Bruges Studio. Each arm of the mobile had a small screen on it that was reacting to its place in the structure and its direction by changing colour.
There were works from past kinetic masters, including a piece by one of my favourite kinetic artists Jesus Raphael Soto, and references to the future, including the London Olympic Games. The simplest ideas are often the best and a piece by a group of students from Thames Valley University was no exception. They had put 5 OHPs together, each one projecting one colour from the 5 Olympic rings. On top of each OHP sat a bowl of water into which dripped water at the rate of a heartbeat (linking the piece to human endeavour and a ‘sequence of events’). The result was 5 huge coloured rings on the wall, constantly moving from the projection of the water ripples (Liquid Athletes). If only we could use this as the 2012 logo for the Olympic games, it was magical.
Further along a geometric shape emerged from behind some mirrors (Ferenc Pocsy) and retracted back again, 3D optical illusions jumped up out of sheet metal (A22 Gallery), a beer barrel wheeled itself up and down a bar until a drink was needed, then it stopped and dispensed one and a teabag endlessly but gently teased a teapot. Two desk lamps played ball. They really did. Surely this was a nod to Pixar? But these were real (Kitchen Budapest, POP (Power of Play)) not virtual.
Then there was a video of what surely must have been another Jump Sink Rat piece. A skip full of rubbish takes itself out a yard, goes on an adventure and reverses itself back into its space afterwards. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you what happens, but the artists must have had such a laugh doing this.
What an inspiring antidote to the virutal world we live in. Where else could you possibly go to see so many unique, diverse and imaginative works of art all under one roof? Is it even art? In true postmodern form, it is art, science, technology, mechanics, geometry, video and photography all rolled together. And I love it. Toothache? What toothache?
