- Venue
- South London Gallery
- Location
- London
Night and darkness have wonderful consequences. For it was during long, sleepless nights that Californian artist Pae White came up with the idea for her latest exhibition at the South London Gallery.
White’s inspirational bout of insomnia can be described as a period of too much night, a time when the night-hunting tiger lurks and hides, patiently waiting to strike. Thus “TIGER TIME” is spelled out with red and purple yarn on the left wall of the gallery, while on the right “UNMATTERING” jumps out in black, each letter roughly twice the height of an average person, further obscuring the full height of the gallery.
The entire room is covered with a net of colour, sprawling from one side to the other, creating a fascinating distortion of the space. The taut yarn reaching from wall to wall has the added effect of creating a seemingly never-ending tunnel, just the right height to force the viewers to slightly crouch down, lest they break one string and the installation starts unravelling around them. The artist has however left enough space between the letters to allow visitors to inhabit these interstices, enveloping themselves by a colourful spider’s web. This immersive experience is emphasized by the way the threads endlessly intertwine.
Ironically, the words can only be read properly while walking through the gallery and yet the closer you get, the further away the letters seem. The words become essential and meaningless at the same time, symbolising the exacerbation of certain images and thoughts during the night that lose their importance with the first ray of light.
The intricate installation could too easily be described with a string of Hollywood one-liners: mesmerising, stunning, utterly absorbing. Yet the choice of words and a simple gesture accompanying the installation give it a deeper and more political meaning, contextualising the work beyond the aesthetic. At the end of the gallery, almost hidden in the corner, lies a discreet yet powerful reminder of the mechanical and tedious labour involved in this kind of work. A small installation consisting of a stack of pizza boxes and a dirty t-shirt reference the people, most likely not-so-well-known artists, who helped her put up the exhibition. A somewhat literal and crass homage to those who used nearly 48 km of yarn and 4,500 tacks to transform a white room into something so complex and so enrapturing.
