- Venue
- Ruskin Gallery
- Location
- East England
We are so used to seeing everyday objects in art galleries. Retro-chic turntables and cine-projectors seem to be de rigeur in any installation nowadays, but of course mundane objects have been appropriated, referenced, absorbed and spat out again for many decades. So it is an intriguing surprise to see ‘Everyday’ at the Ruskin Gallery tackle the subject with (apart from two video pieces) exclusively wall-based work. It is even more intriguing when it becomes apparent that there are to be no cheap tricks here: no post-pop cultural icons, no overt references to the ubiquity of advertisements and the media, no carefully ‘found’ objects artfully arranged. Instead we are treated to the slow burn of quiet, thoughtful yet insistent work that demands time and patience.
‘Everyday’, curated by Tony Benn, features nine artists who share a common concern for some aspect of the mundane in their work. Of course this is still a very wide brief, and the artists have set themselves very different agendas. So for example, Suzanne Treister’s transformations of newspaper content into complex drawings that suggest hidden relationships and magical connections offer a marked contrast to Paul Butler’s visceral depictions of feral dogs that allude to the menace of an urban dystopia. And yet across the show the unity of the 2d format – with the evident care that each artist has for formal and technical considerations – creates a pleasing additional dialogue between the works over and above their thematic common ground.
However, it is a video work, ‘Refreshments’ by Amikan Toren, that most successfully hits the mark. Toren narrates six short stories (with titles such as ‘John’, Lunch’ and ‘Cigarettes’) in a calm, neutral monotone. As each story unfolds against a filmed backdrop of disinterested familiarity (a street corner, a garden patio, an art studio) a small incident is revealed: a departure from the otherwise numbing uniformity of daily life. A chance encounter, an overheard conversation, a disturbing recollection of a former life. Toren captures the essence of the everyday, which is to say the relationship between incident and non-incident: the point at which something memorable emerges from the background noise.
‘Everyday’ is a thoughtful and considered exploration of its subject. And yet at its heart is an intriguing paradox. For surely there is nothing thoughtful and considered about the everyday – is there?
