- Venue
- University of Glamorgan
- Location
- Wales
The cuts, the cuts! I hear you howl in your best middle class protest voice as some feral young thing in a hoodie and scarf, covering all but the eyes, launches a rock towards the glass window frame of where you’re queuing to buy doughnuts. Churchill’s meaty words “Then what are we fighting for?” ring in your ears, as your eyes cycle down the list of sugary varieties. You have no inclination to protest on an empty stomach! The hysteria and fear pass you by as you select your sweet of choice. You needn’t worry as artists howl and protest to the sound of the cuts, the cuts. A creative reaction steps forward over the glass shards of your local bank and turning the fears for your future and your pension into works of art. Proving that without doubt when the apocalypse comes it will be the artists that survive. More resourceful and more likely to pick the bones of humanity clean to continue their work.
Since 1899 the Cardiff Arcades have been home to desirable goods and delicacies tempting the pennies from the purses of resident and visiting consumers. Now our society faces an ultimatum and I enter a show that seeks to challenge its inner workings.
I start in the basement with the 139, a particularly awful name for a band, who adorn the front cover of half heavy rock, half malthusianist magazine, Kerrank. I elbow myself to the front of the queue, Blitzreig Bop blares out of my ipod, as I attempt to channel punk rock but fall short. At the table, glossy black and white photos show the band looking moody, magnetic tape unspooled and spun around them suggesting they are too out of date. Their posturing only serves to give them the unintentional look of disaffected Thunderbird puppets with emotional problems perfect for the meagre diet of today’s youth.
I retrieve my signed photo, black and white naturally, and reel in the spectre of the defunct compact cassette tape format. The band is in denial, but they soldier on like HMV. They are clearly a failure emphasised by the stacks of brown cardboard boxes that cover the floor of their practice room, come garage. Peering inside a box reveals assorted sizes of 139 t-shirts, whether originally from an unsuccessful tour or purely merchandise that will never sell. The t-shirts in this unused state, all boxed up, in mounds, remind me of too many exhibition cards and catalogues holed up in dark gallery cupboards across the country. Art books that are only bought by artists, music made just for musicians, critically acclaimed but never a sniff of success on the main stream.
There is failure and hopeless cool down here so much so you can smell it, unfortunately the band never become hopelessly cool. Their jaws chew and eyes roll to the opportunity that once beckoned for the ‘next big thing’. The road is long and the walls of pictures, email commands, instructions and printed text correspondences are more art installation than rock band but the self-obsession is shared. I can’t help wonder whether the work be more successful and ultimately stronger with the absence of the band? Suicide was always good for the street cred after all.
There is also a debt to Bill Drummond here, not only in the use of instructions but in tone and vision. I am fondly reminded of Mark Manning and Drummond’s 1997 publication Bad Wisdom in which they created a record label, Kalevala and with it 6 of the most visionary bands from the Finnish underground scene including Dracula’s Daughter, The Blizzard King and Gimpo. Of course none of these bands were real, instead each provided an opportunity to experiment musically from pop-punk to extreme dance metal while sticking one in the eye of the record companies and musos. The 6 vinyl records were knowingly pressed in a limited and collectable edition as Manning and Drummond attempted to gain worldwide exposure for an imaginary music scene, seemingly plucking these apparent geniuses from obscurity, and duping the music world.
An anomalous familiarity resonates through the absence and lack of life in the work of Nathan Laughlin. In the adjacent room, his sterile office, its contents made from humble cardboard, masking tape, is illuminated by projections of real objects. Bleached of their colour and branding, left only as achromic vessels sitting quietly on the shelf. The office furniture looks like it is direct from Ikea but lacks this brand distinction. Lit only by a light that obscures, Laughlin conjures a dead white void like the three-dimensional chimera of a Giorgio Morandi still life. There are ghosts here in this basement and the projections suggest the confessional space of a now unemployed office worker. Is this the life left behind? Is this your day job? Is it time to escape? I try the chair in this barren quiet office corner, I find little comfort. My inbox is empty, stagnated. This could be the slowly flickering recording of one’s repetitive working life and it is chilling.
As I trip up the stairs a velociraptor grappling hook attacks a painting with a frame within a frame. I make it to floor two where a plinth sprouts legs, defies gravity and escapes the gallery floor. Graham Talbot has waged an all out war against the commercial art world. Art work versus art work, taste defies price tag, painting tackles frame, sculpture v plinth. They are tearing strips off one another until they can no longer be owned or contained. Finally they break free from their role as servants to un-functional, self-obsessed objects with their ever increasing prices. They shout ‘purchase us and we will run riot in your living room, smashing up your walls’ as they do battle. They can be consumed no more.
Tiff Oben presents the uncomfortably self-referential Business Relations. Oben uses the aesthetics of the boardroom to present confessional pie charts and bar graphs made in Microsoft Excel and cheekily laminated as if for a boardroom presentation. Each data record analyses a breakdown of domestic issues – how many swear words are used in the format of a companies profits. Sadly there is no fortune here, only shock and wonder at how the appropriation of such personal information can show how common this is.
Statistics are used to support this and disprove that. Made to bend and fit whatever opinion, point of view or law politicians may wish to pass. Although Oben only presents percentages and figures here, it is difficult not to worry for the state of mind of the employee. Have they lost their ability to discriminate between work and home or are they in the realms of fantasy? But as if to crush the ambiguity dead I turn to find a smashed keyboard housed in a Perspex container as remnants from one of the arguments contained in the charts. This is serious.
Christine Marfleet’s haunting Docile Bodies installation tells the story of the Alexon Clothing Factory in Treforest that began operating in the 1930s but has recently closed and with it much of the employment of the local area. Marfleet suspends one complete 1950’s navy ladies coat, one of the factories original products, from a rod and the various parts of the coat hang evenly spaced around it. The title refers to the Foucalt theory of the same name. Marfleet’s striking piece demonstrates that in the assembly line the worker’s various specialist skills contribute to the parts of the dress but in fact prevent them from ever having the individual knowledge to make an entire coat. They are made reliant on one another to complete each task, the boss has all the power and autonomy. Once again the proletariat are kept busy and under control.
This is a poignant show picking a part, questioning the times we live in and our own values. Nothing to Declare does that rare thing. It can push your buttons while manipulating your thinking then entice you back with the promise of something further. Maybe intelligent shows like this can activate the idiots in the doughnut queue but only time will tell.
