- Venue
- Torre Abbey
- Location
- South West England
Inside Out An exhibition of works and ideas by the Aesthetic Conceptualist group
Despite the group’s name, works by the Aesthetic Conceptualists have little to do with high Art ‘isms’ and much to do with socio-political debris. On reaching the top floor of the newly refurbished Abbey, visitors encounter a large room containing neat assemblages of what appear to be discarded and useless objects, including a photograph of a cling-filmed ruin, and a murky diorama lit briefly by a faulty hand-cranked torch.
Much of the work seems to be in deferral, as though waiting for something else to come, but what that something else might be is never explicit – merely implied. At one end of the room, there is a circle of empty chairs, each one bearing an identical label: YOU DEFINE ME. At the other end of the room, a body movement triggers a sharp burst of energy from a machine just beyond view. These are pseudo theatrical events in which the audience is – and is not – implicated.
In creative praxis, restlessness and doubt are welcomed as prompts for theoretical and philosophical insight; not only into the making and showing of art, but also into the nature of language and its role in understanding our place in the world. We might (for example) ask how a simple grouping of detritus can evoke intense melancholia (Christine Sweetman’s my life in boxes), or why we find pleasure in the tension of a half open door (Emma Carter’s Subjective Reflective), or why a movement that is heard is more disturbing than one that is seen (Phil Dixon’s Life Expectancy).
For many artists, the de and re-construction of an object and its original function is an existential need, leading to a labrynthine artistic journey where processes of doing and undoing seem to make the most sense, and where stories and actions are layered, partially erased, then folded back together as tremulous objects, images or events. The best of these disturbs the reverie of the viewer or reader. In its modesty, it may deny us formal beauty or usefulness, reminding us instead of those fragile moments – the small ordeals, exchanges and gestures that come together to shape our private and shared lives.
Perhaps the point of this kind of work is to remind us that art-things stem from, and exist in the same spaces, places and times as other things, including human-things, and that our co-existence may not always fit learned ideas of how, why, where, or when art (or any other thing) does its being in the world.
In hinting at the complex rationale underpinning almost a century of ideas-led art (from Duchamp to Emin), this exhibition acts as a prompt to re-visit those old discourses, and in so doing, remind ourselves that art, like life, is sometimes, but not always, extra-ordinary.
Linda Khatir, 07 10 2009
Inside Out is on show at Torre Abbey, Kings Drive, Torquay TQ2 5JE until 5 November 2009
