Keeper

Venue

Mission Gallery

Location

Wales

At first sight, the main premise of Bella Kerr’s new show, Keeper, appears to be an invitation to read – to read in company, aloud or silently. The Mission Gallery has been turned into a reading room. Kerr herself is reading, surrounded by an array of books, forming short towers. ‘Being in the space is a new thing for me,’ she says. Kerr is following a long tradition of makers opting to be physically present in their created space – the writer, Will Self, wrote in a gallery, the artist, Sophie Calle, often attended her own shows, handing out comment forms and sitting blank-faced while they are filled out. A brave act. One of responsibility, of accountability. With Keeper there is a lot to take in, to orienteer, to negotiate, to read. The space, made suddenly sublime by the afternoon sun casting perfect white squares of window-light upon the blackened floor, is at odds with the thundering of children’s feet on the floorboards overhead. Large wooden structures, a nod to Kerr’s usual practice, stand, lean or rest on wheels. These angular forms, suggestive of table tops, ladders, shelving and drawers, have been left, for the most part, unpainted. Photocopies of poems, essays, architectural-style drawings are strewn, or form sliding piles, upon their surfaces. Pizza-style cardboard boxes, containing all the exhibition literature, lurk in corners, awaiting collection. There is a laser printer on the floor, a large painting with its front to the wall, a cut-off ladder top standing next to it. Rows of leaflets, articulating the reasoning behind the exhibition, hang from a makeshift dado rail; fixed with tiny strips of masking tape they follow the lines of the white-distempered walls. Red plastic chairs with black chrome legs await sitters. Look closer and on the shelves lie carefully arranged flotsam, echoing the imagery of an Angela Carter novel or a Paula Rego painting: doll’s house furniture, scrunched up balls of paper, of paper clay, figures made from curls of fake fur, turrets of carpet off-cuts, shiny ceramic bunnies, G-clamps, scissors, folded squares of tea towels, oblongs of blankets, boxes of geometry implements and bits of torn coloured paper, taped like swatches to the sides of the shelving. Then there are the books. The Child the Books Built, The Dialogue of Dogs, Freud’s Toys, Thin Places, The Shape of a Pocket, Red Works and Wilderness Tips – titles that, rather like the kindergarten-style chairs, attempt to suggest a narrative, a map, a way through this maze of associations. Keeper has been given a limited palette. Red, black and white. The colours of fairy tales, Kerr is telling a visitor. Fairy tales. A childhood of reading – curled up in corners, lingering in attics – alone. A private experience that Kerr wishes us to perform, in company, in public. ‘Don’t touch,’ snaps a mother at her son, as she rushes her way into the space. Kerr responds, inviting them to look, read and indeed, touch. The boy strokes the cover of one of the books, momentarily liberated from the usual gallery protocol, only to be whisked away, minutes later, by his urgent parent. ‘But what is the artwork?’ a woman is now asking her, ‘I thought you were a textile artist.’ Kerr’s tone is measured, careful, if a little defensive: ‘no, I am a fine artist.’ The visitor continues to bombard her with questions. ‘Do you have a belief system? ‘Are you religious?’ ‘Religion isn’t the primary force behind my work, no’. She picks up a book, offering it to her, ‘Have you read…?’ The questioning continues. ‘But are you religious?’ Clearly discomforted, Kerr finally implores, ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ before excusing herself to go upstairs and hear the children’s poems. Before she leaves she turns to the visitor and says, ‘Will you (with a stress on the ‘you’) do me a favour and sit down and read?’ The woman declines, choosing instead to follow her up the stairs, to ‘check on her daughter’. Kerr talks of promoting an exchange of knowledge, of ideas – she offers to photocopy the essays, the poems – encouraging us to fill up the boxes. She muses over how she must change the ‘furniture’ around. For all its good intentions, Keeper is an unfinished work, lacking glue, cohesion. Maybe if we were left alone, not so watched-over, the reading might happen, naturally. It is the performative element that is uncomfortable for us and clearly for her. It is un-thought through – a suck-it-and-see approach that leaves the visitor both un-held and even a little bullied. This is an exhibition that is too heavily weighted towards a wished-for outcome rather than a here-and-now experience. The childhood triggers are nice and the structures striking – but even the presence of the blankets can’t make this a space that is really conducive to a companionable collective sharing of texts. More warden than keeper, Kerr perhaps wants too much from this. And that wanting creates a force, an atmosphere of coercion rather than equanimity. ‘Do take a box,’ she calls out as people leave, ‘after all, everyone uses boxes don’t they?’