- Venue
- Millennium Galleries (The)
- Location
Tim Etchell’s belongs to a small artists group called Forced Entertainment whose website describes what they undertake as ranging from “…projects that are very brash and theatrical to other works that are very minimal and text-based.”
At Art Sheffield 08: Yes No Other Options*, situated within the Millennium galleries and the close surrounding area are short text phrases formed in neon by Etchell’s. Shown directly within the gallery space were two related works in a double monitor video installation as well as a third neon text piece.
The text works reminded me of Jenny Holzer and her piece Survival 1983-1985 which beamed messages such as “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT”, and Wim Delvoye’s work in which casual messages are manipulated on to photographs so as to appear as great carvings on cliff faces, messages removed from their context such as “MUM KEYS ARE YOU KNOW WHERE”. The more obvious comparison to neon text works such as Run from Fear, Fun from Rear 1972 by Bruce Nauman, felt distant and unrelated. These phrases seemed like quotes from conversations, desperate and neither here nor there; rather than being ethereal or making confident statements.
I never feel certain about works in neon; it is a difficult medium to engage with. I love the stuff, it’s beautiful, pure colour. It seems timeless yet comfortably situated as an advertising medium, but now has now developed its own context, one that has grown out of its repetitious use in forming art works.
That the words are blue, white or red in colour and that they are all capitals, that they are about 20cm high letters and that no punctuation is used seems only important insofar as that these factors are almost overlooked, we recognise it is neon, this is important and the nature of neon achieves a grasp over our attention.
There is a detached or daft humour surrounding these three neon works which display, messages such as
WAIT HERE
I HAVE
GONE TO
GET HELP
this would have to be a written phrase, one voiced without vocal presence, assumingly through the form of a written note.
The need for help suggests an impending crisis or elements of tragedy; but this is a neon sign, they take time to make. This could imply something is wrong permanently, with the world, something unsolvable and that not everything fits or ever will. But also that the artist has a wish that things were not this way. These works are open to interpretation and allude to themes of resisting demands made of us everyday: they imply narrative transitions in their format and are probably here because the exhibition is based around ideas of failing and non-compliance.
That these phrases have been removed from the everyday and formed into permanent art objects requests our involvement with a view to the phrases being important, these are not scrawled on the wall with every possibility of being covered up. They are transformed into permanent art-objects.
Within the Millennium gallery, a large, clean, funded, space, an ambiguous and therefore negative and funny statement is made in white neon:
LET’S PRETEND NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED
It isn’t terribly belittling to the artwork shown beside it, because it is very possible that the work is referring to itself. Perhaps this phrase asks for our forgiveness, wants us to accept failed (art) attempts, even to embrace them.
PLEASE COME BACK
I AM SORRY
ABOUT WHAT
HAPPENED BEFORE
is displayed to the street entrance of the exhibition, located near this entrance-exit, are we promised a better time if we return? That the artist feels they have let the viewer down? This particular piece could even be seen to homage Bas Jan Ader, continuing a narrative set out by PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME which Ader once painted onto a gallery wall in seeming desperation. Nothing is really said about these astute and cryptic statements, this feels necessary to their functioning as artworks, for if more were said, they simply wouldn’t work.
In the two video works of performances Insults & Praises and Promises & Threats, we see on a 21” monitor, a camera and two people sitting behind it in close proximity brushing shoulders. They are viewing themselves in a mirror. They take turns in progressively insulting each other with a range of insults varying from petty childish colloquialisms to uneasy threats of violence. Throughout, the comments made toward one another steadily become compliments and congratulations.
Etchell’s frequently uses lists or list based speech within his performances and text works. The performers casually use language with a more personal feel rather than the clinical examination of language which takes place in a similar work by Bruce Nauman: Good Boy Bad Boy 1985. We assume that these two people are talking to each other, it certainly seems like they are, most probably because they reciprocate with one another, she compliments him, he replies positively. There seems to be some planning done, a script of sorts. The work feels practiced, but not rehearsed or learnt.
There are two versions of this, an original Insults and Praises and a newer version Promises and Threats where a similar work has been created by the artist and the same collaborator yet longer phrases and proposals are spoken. Two monitors sit side by side so to speak. There are benches and headphones for only two people to sit at for each of the televisions. The screens do not face the same way, while sitting, the left screen is visible while the right faces away from you so you can see the back of a monitor. Once you have viewed one piece of work, you reseat yourself on the bench at the other side of this arrangement to view the other television.
You sit, therefore only ever with one other person. You could mirror the people you watch. This doesn’t become integral to the work, but rather makes it all much more intimate, the headphones keep everything close and confined. The gallery space is open, large and has high ceilings. The installation is sited openly, but I didn’t feel exposed as a viewer.
This arrangement of two similar works shown with one another is intriguing. You can only compare the works from memory as simultaneous viewing is made impossible. Having to get up and reseat yourself, reapply the headphones and join the same fluctuating list based dialogue does not demand much from us as viewers, yet it intelligently shapes the means to which we can compare the works and more importantly stops us from confusing two separate pieces of work.
Bibliography
[1] VERWOERT, J., 2008. Art Sheffield 08 Yes No Other Options* .Sheffield: Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum.[
2] FORCED ENTERTAINMENT, 2007. The Company. [Online] Forced Entertainment Co. Available at: www.forcedentertainment.com/thecompany [Accessed 27 February 2008]
[3] GROSENICK, U., RIEMSCHNEIDER, B., 1999. Art at the Turn of the Millennium. London: Benedikt Taschen.
