- Venue
- Permanent Gallery
- Location
A tangle of pulsating neon, reflecting its aurora in the twisted copper, articulates something one would not expect to find encased in an oak vitrine. This is one of twelve immaculately crafted cases, each containing fragments of a voyage by ship, that fill the Permanent Gallery space. Mounted on deep red plinths, Steve Bunn's sculptures reference the language of museums, of using objects to create and validate stories of intrepid expeditions to far off lands, of fitting them into a science of discovery and conquest. However, the content of Bunn's vitrines raise questions about the boundaries of such a science. A crazed doctor sprawled out on the floorboards, or is it a raft? A dissected coffin. A delicate model ship resting precariously on an iron bar, engulfed by thick copper wire, and wedged on a piece of deep blue velvet. A stove with a black and white fire could only be a memory. A collection of bizarre hybrid brass animals. An oratory that would leave you lost. There is no linear narrative to this story, and yet it makes absolute sense, poetically capturing something of the anxiety and awe that we associate with journeys into the unknown.
No Survivors is a collaborative venture between Steve Bunn and Duncan Swann, who have taken as their starting point a voyage by ship that may or may not have taken place. Swann exhibits forty one small oil paintings alongside Bunn's sculptures. His images present us with pieces of a journey, like stills from a nightmare – it's the men, the water and the fantasies, fears and realities that take place in between. The aesthetic of Swann's paintings is enticing – he captures the charm of the historical material he uses as a starting point, and twists the nostalgia into something meaningful, creating a connection that is no longer rooted in any particular era, and yet is indebted to our relationship with the past. Mounted in a rectangular block of twenty seven, it is easy to start formulating stories between the individual works – one can imagine the blind old sea dog scaring the young sailors with the tale of the killer squid suffocating the crew to death – but ultimately there is no single account underpinning the works, they are more slippery than that. On the facing wall, four paintings of compass like stars stake out corner points, while a further eleven works are scattered, suggesting a fragmented map. For me, a tension between regularity and disorder runs throughout the show, and nods towards a fascination with the past unmoderated by the narratives of History or a distinction between myth and reality. In this, the show creates a completely new narrative, using the draw of historical material and its languages of presentation to introduce a journey that is instead rooted in feelings of great uncertainty and the unknown, managing to capture something of the terrible delight that we take in exploring such things.
