- Venue
- Zabludowicz Collection London
- Location
- South East England
Art Without A Heart
Last night I attended Future Map 10, an event that couldn’t help raising expectations by strap-lining itself as: ‘Showcasing the finest talent from the University of the Arts London’. Always, a mistake to promise what one can’t deliver.
Held at the Zabludowicz Collection, a former Methodist Chapel built in the late 1860’s, one was immediately struck by how this elegant Corinthian-style former temple of religion had been transformed into a temple to high art. And what kind of art? A slick, stylish, professionalised art – art without a heart – symbolised perhaps by Jess Blackstone’s polished-looking: 1000pcsx100mm cubes (+/- 20mm tolerance). A piece made up of two refrigeration units, facing one another, filled with square slabs of set concrete. Was it clever, and momentarily intriguing? Yes, but no pun intended, it left me cold. I could muster no feeling.
Similarly, Josh Baum’s Instrument for reading Heraclitus and Instrument for observing water bounce were clever, witty and, even, scientific. Precision physical manifestations of watching water move. Yet, one was reminded of rich-boys toys. Gleaming concrete and glass corporate offices where sets of low-slung silver ball-bearing-like balls set in a metal frame, the first and the last, clicking methodically, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.
Did either comment on where we are today? ‘And now, what days are these?’[i]
I don’t think so.
Chandelier: Hair Filament by Youn Joo (Dari) Bae was beautiful, and, on close examination, it became apparent the glass filaments were filled with hair. But, so what?
‘Didn’t it make you think of the holocaust?’ A University of the Arts employee asked?
‘Yes … perhaps …. fleetingly … but again: so what? It didn’t move me. Not like walking into Miroslaw Balka’s Tate Modern tunnel of darkness: How it is.’
Okay, so it is unfair to make such comparisons. But chandeliers seen as repositories of memory or symbols of power and capitalism, haven’t we moved on? Everyone can own a chandelier now. Just pop into your local home-improvement store. I wondered had the artist seen the 2009 exhibition by recent RCA graduate, Jodie Carey, at the Towner art gallery, where three massive chandeliers were created from replicas of human bones? [ii]
However, the low point was Lucia Rivero’s Sway, which featured two electric hairdryers entwined by their cords and electrical current, causing them to twist and gyrate together, while music played and their shadows were cast upon the wall. Perhaps an interesting experiment in the artist’s own studio, but surely not one of the best MA Fine Art examples Central St Martins could muster.
Only Sofie Alsbo’s film Tribe Absurdia that reconfigured Elvis, to dance to the throbbing, perpetual beat of an African drum, had any authority, or a life-force that made my companion and I smile and feel something akin to relief from further slickness, and perhaps even a little joy, momentarily.
Nothing else moved me, or my companion. In fact we were deeply unmoved by this cold, calculated, stylish display of what? Posturing? It felt like an exhibition of artists trying too hard to come up with the next good-to-go idea, to fit the snappy, get-it-and-go mentality. A generation with an attention span shrunk to that of a flea.
And where was the hand of the artist?
In this exhibition, the artists personal mark was missing, there was nothing hand-made, that I could see, no work on paper or canvas? Was that a unanimous University of the Arts decision to show no painting in 2011, or was it just an unhappy accident? A lack of communication between the six colleges that make up ‘Europe’s largest university for the creative arts’? [iii]
And where was the emotion, the feeling, any nod to the dismal days we are experiencing now, or the dark post 9/11 decade we have just lived through?
As usual, I seem to have more questions than answers.
ends
[i] Quote from Henry Perowne, lead character in the 2005 novel, Saturday, by Ian McEwan.
[ii] In the Eyes of Others by Jodie Carey at Towner, Eastbourne, 2009. http://www.eastbourne.gov.uk/eastbourne/news/2009/…
[iii] Future Map 10 catalogue
