- Venue
- Barbican Arts Centre
- Location
I didn’t go to this feeling cynical or expecting to be disappointed, in fact quite the opposite, but it’s a long time since I’ve stood in a gallery and wondered, “Is this art?” The sound is great and immersive – enhanced rainfall evocative of those times we are in a tent or trapped by the weather. Of course, it looks amazing to see rain falling heavily indoors, although it is not a unique experience to be thrilled by an indoor water installation, perhaps in a corporate building.
In the dark Curve Gallery, there is a dramatic bright light which shines through the water, and the people ahead of you are picked out in silhouette, with diamond, prismatic raindrops around them. The problem is that I got quite wet, even following instructions of keeping at a slow walking pace. On a freezing day with snow outside, it wasn’t much fun to feel those big fat drops thumping on my head, darkening my shoulders and spreading out. It’s a great idea and a technological marvel, but I remember thinking, in the middle of the installation, that it was better before I went into it. As an immersive experience, there are details the audience is supposed to ignore, but as a spectacle, to observe and as an idea, it is ripe as material for art.
Queuing and audience direction policies – of my own free will I joined the queue where it said it would take two hours – thankfully it was a half hour less than that. If queuing is part of the experience then it is part of the show, and I was really surprised that the Barbican hadn’t figured out better practice – there was room for a long line of chairs rather than have people standing or sitting on the floor all that time; a timed ticketing system is easy to do: at the top of the queue was a surface where was an accumulated collection of old coffee cups and smelly food wrappers, unattended for hours: there is one notice near the entrance giving the info about the installation which you cannot see from the queue, which could easily be repeated within eyesight while waiting. Last year the Tate had Tania Bruguera’s piece Immigrant Movement International where queuing was part of the experience, and although a vastly different piece, it seems like a wasted opportunity for a long queue for an exhibition to be nothing but a queue.
