INTERFACE

REVIEW

Art of Occupation

Working Rooms, London, 12-21 September

Reviewed by: Anna Hales »

A new exhibition by a new collective in a new space – Art of Occupation was all about firsts. The inaugural show by Tangent Projects in the Working Rooms gallery was rather hidden from the beaten track, but well worth seeking out. Climbing the unpolished, industrial stairwell to the top I was considering the story that had been laid out in the press release; how it would serve to form the uniting thread between the works and inform my viewing of the exhibition.

Art of Occupation was inspired by the book ‘Hollow Land’, by Eyel Weizman, which tells the true story of how the erection of a phone tower, on an uninhabited hilltop between Jerusalem and Palestinian settlements in the northern West bank, resulted in the settlement of a village. Delays in the construction of the planned mast, which was needed to provide a much-needed improvement in mobile-phone reception, motivated the settlers to erect a fake antenna. The gradual occupation of this territory began with the guard of the antenna and his family, and continued to grow into a community in its own right.

As I reached the top of the stairwell I was presented with two entrances, one to the right and one to the left. Proceeding through the right doorway, the first piece of work to meet my gaze was a series of concrete structures by Helene Kazan. Before taking time to study these objects, I turned to the space to gather my bearings, and realised I was blocked in – an installation of fluorescent light-tubes stretched the whole width of the gallery. Behind this piece, I noted three other works on the other side of the (now patently divided) gallery space.

Cedric Christie’s work, entitled Barrier, After Eyel Weizman, occupied the physicality of one of Dan Flavin’s own trademark light pieces – his 1968 work, also called Barrier. Whereas Flavin’s original was lit, Christie’s was not, and, in this sense, it initially looked rather defunct and sorrowful by comparison. However, its power over the gallery space as a physical intervention – traversing the gallery space as an obstruction – was adequate to mould the dynamic of the show. Christie’s piece, essentially imposing its presence on the work of the other contributing artists and the audience, was humorously audacious, yet simultaneously embodied serious notions of occupation and spatial ownership.

Reminiscent of industrial structures and architectural foundations, Kazan’s work of concrete struts, entitled Mark 1, leaned against the wall with a weighty presence. Materiality wasn’t denied, with the legs supported with wooden feet, bolted firmly to the floor – these small functional details reflecting the immense weight of the piece. One of the struts bared its internal composition, exposing a wooden post covered in heavy-duty nails. This bold work, standing strong and robust, reflected a metaphorical paradox, for although the nails reinforced the physical strength of the object, they spoke of an internal anxiety and fragility – a sensibility with distinctly human connotations – within the cold, industrial concrete.

It was not only Christie who appropriated another artist’s work for their contribution to the show, with Steve Smith recreating a version of Carl Andre’s 1966 work Equivalent VIII, which consisted, famously, of uniform bricks stacked evenly; Smith instead choosing to dredge the banks of the Thames to find worn-down samples, which he presented in a manner reminiscent of Andre’s original. Having lost some of their original individual shape, each of the eroded forms appeared occupied with the past, and due to their varying size, a visual effect of tidal movement was created in the arrangement. The origin of these bricks played on my mind – what had they once been a part of and how had they come to reside in the Thames? Smith’s piece made me consider the forces at work that effect one’s placement at any given place or time, and, consequently, how these influences shape one’s disposition.

Karen D’Amico’s installation, Shift, embodied many of the ideas this show seemed interested in addressing. Numerous cards were hung in neat, concise rows from the ceiling, portraying assorted imagery of maps and looking at the migration patterns of Europeans. On one side of the tags were European locations – Switzerland, for example – and on the other, the country to which these peoples migrated – in this case, Canada. These rows of cards, reminiscent of luggage tags on carousels, had a real sense of voyage, relocation and settlement, and seemed to present ideas of placement and cultural agenda.

At the far end of the gallery was Emily Candela’s video piece, Fire; a back projection of a makeshift Canary Wharf, burning down, shone through a simple piece of tracing-paper that had been stuck to the wall (very noticeably) with masking tape – an act of considered honesty. Candela’s video addressed the modern tension between guilt and desire within urban development and financial growth, the piece achieving a developed contemporary resonance after the recent financial disasters at Canary Wharf.

The show was exceptionally curated; the selection of works and their placement within the space were intelligently considered, manifesting a dynamic presence instilled with intense conceptual debates. As I walked back down the stairwell I wondered whether the artists had indeed managed to ‘occupy’ the space – in terms equal to those of the ‘Hollow Land’s’ Palestinian villagers – or whether they had just temporarily borrowed the gallery. I then realised that this uncertainty behind what is owned and what is borrowed spatially may, in fact, be the crux of the show’s investigations.

Writer detail:
Anna Hales is a writer based in London. MA Aesthetics and Art Theory.

anna.hales@gmail.com

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