INTERFACE

REVIEW

Art now; the way in which it landed

Tate Britain, London
2 August - 26 October 2008

Reviewed by: James Huyton »

When you visit an exhibition you generally know what content to expect before you attend, but as for the Tate Britain’s recent exhibition Art now: the way in which it landed; it’s actually incredibly difficult to know what you’re looking at, especially when a width of dark grey MDF is suspended directly in your line of sight.

    Although the first piece of work you encounter could be mistaken as a barrier, or even a method of guiding the audience in a particular direction. Lucy Clout’s Untitled (eyebrow) (2008) is possibly the most impacting of the entire collection. By blocking your line of sight into the show and more importantly blocking your vision of other people’s expressions. It really removes all sense of emotion from the artwork’s effect. The width of close-to-black MDF (the same size as the door frame leading into the exhibition) essentially, censors the audience’s faces.

 

The guest curator for the show, Ryan Gander wanted to set up a show that focused not on choosing artworks to fit a theme, but to choose artists. So intrinsically it becomes a group curation as opposed to Gander acting as a director. Even though this is an interesting approach to the role of a curator, it makes for an awkward and confusing experience, one that is quite difficult to like. Without a theme, you’re not really sure what you are looking for in the work. However, it is true that sometimes art is about asking questions and prescribing your own purpose to the work.  Yet, it’s still nice to have a starting point.

 

The video by Aurélien Froment is actually very suggestive of what the show is about. With Lucy Clout’s Untitled (eyebrows) as a visual blockade to the rest of the show and other people’s reactions, Théâtre de poche (2007) acts as the ‘starting point’ needed in order to help understand the show.  As a magician’s show unfolds before us, we witness Froment sift through various images on postcard sized flash cards. Facing the viewer, he then places them next to each other on the screen, going back and forth adding and removing the images as he deems fit.

 This concept of a collection with seemingly unrelated images is actually one of the primary intentions of the exhibition. A conversation printed on the back of the accompanying pamphlet, tells of how Gander had come up with the idea for the show. He explains that during an unrelated trip to the Tate stores he became enticed by how all the different artworks were stored. Different screens were employed to hold the flat artworks merely inches away from one another, although they were “meticulously ordered and stored, the works are put wherever there is space”*.

One of these ‘storage’ screens was selected by chance (the same way the artworks fall next to each other upon them). Where by both sides of the screen host the entire left wall of the space.  The art works are positioned as they would appear on the screen. As your eyes fall upon an oil painting from 1910, inches from the ground situated directly next to a photograph of a young girl in a bathing suit from 1992 it is an odd experience with a lot of information to take in very quickly. Not only is the positioning of the works rather unconventional they share no common interest.

 

One of the participating artist’s David Renggli claims that he is “very much interested in different information given at the same time. Confusion”*. If this is so then this exhibition would probably be hailed as a success, yet whether that makes it an interesting or furthermore a good show is a different question.

    The randomness of the works gives an unrelenting sense of work-in-progress, as though the show were unfinished. This could be perceived as a comment on ‘art now’; an ever moving, ever changing entity of creativity and thought processes. Or it could just be perceived as generally quite an empty exhibition. By placing a couple of printed drawings of what appear to be a photocopier and a projector, next to a cast rock on a plinth with a wire speech bubble emerging from it I feel they demean each other. I guess I feel that without a shared theme they make it difficult for each other to communicate with the audience. Lucy Clout’s Untitled 2 (2008) reminds me of David Shrigley’s work. Yet as they represent a theme of repetition they only just compliment a reference to Rodin’s ‘the thinker’ in Nathaniel Mellors’ thinking rock speaks (2008). I don’t want this to sound like an attack of the artist’s work, but I won’t pretend I enjoyed the exhibition when I actually felt quite angered by it, yet I have always said we don’t like what we don’t understand, and this perhaps is a prime example.

 

In terms of what Ryan Gander set out to achieve, then I would probably give him credit for having achieved it. Otherwise, I’m still unsure of the purpose of why he set out to achieve what he has. He has based an exhibition on artists he admires and successfully brought them together, yet paradoxically the artists are working against each other. I felt that Lucy Clout’s Untitled (eyebrows) was a fascinating piece, but it didn’t compliment the other works. Something I was taught a group show should do. Without a theme there is no flow of thought process in the viewer, as you move from one work to the next there are conflicting feelings, possibly what led to my anger. However, this was intended as an experiment and experiment is certainly what Gander did. Even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy the show, the results of daring experiments rarely do impress immediately. Renggli said that “I do things which I do not understand or understand at the time” and so “I just let them go on knowing it will make sense sooner or later”*. Perhaps, this is just one of those things.

 

 

 

 

*all quotes taken from ‘Art now: the way in which it landed’ pamphlet; Tate Britain, 2008

jameshuyton@live.co.uk

Venue detail:
Tate Britain »
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/thewayinwhichitlanded/default.shtm 

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