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REVIEW
Charles Avery & Lindsay Seers at 'Altermodern': A review
Tate Britain, London
3 February - 26 April 2009
Reviewed by: James Huyton »
Many of the artist’s works at ‘Altermodern’ operate on multiple levels, and the way Bourriaud presents them to us is in a manner that would have these separate levels inter-link with one another at different times and locations within the exhibition. Richard Dorment points out that, “the art in the Triennial is open-ended, formless, and refers to something outside itself. Walking through the show is like spending a few hours aimlessly surfing the net.”[1] This choice of presentation supports Bourriaud’s notion that we are living in a networked, globalised world whereby geographic location is a less relevant factor in terms of production of work. With increased communication “Artists wander in geography as well as in history, exploring a trans-cultural landscape.” This is an era of art Bourriaud has coined ‘Altermodern’. Following Post-modernism, the equally vague, compound word ‘Altermodern’ “suggests a multitude of possibilities, of alternatives to a single route”[2], and whilst at times the show can seem like a bit of a mish-mash, with little to help define it in the title. As you become exposed to more of the show though, you begin to realize the show is very networked itself, as works appear to branch out in different directions into one another, not just operating on a singular plane.
Conceptually, Charles Avery’s work captures this well, accused of being “insufferably twee and deeply tedious”[3], I personally felt that the method in which Avery’s two separate works were presented really captured something interesting and gripping that many of the other works failed to achieve. Initially taken aback by the monstrously otherworldly, plaster sculpture of a fictional beast. ‘Aleph null head’, stands out above everything in the room it occupies. A face protrudes from an elephant style trunk bearing an almost identical resemblance to the face it has come from. On the surrounding walls adjacent to the sculpture, hang Avery’s second work. ‘Installation of drawings’, although half of these six drawings host golden plaques with titles, they act together as a singular piece of work. The sub-titled work ‘Triangleland bourgeoisie studying the head of an Aleph,’ depicts a male and female, indeed studying the head of the same creature I was moments ago. The two works exist separately, as the drawings do, as well as collectively. In the next room this is reproduced with Rachel Harrison’s three separate works, that could be confused as a singular installation “the three pieces may equally be read as one piece: very Altermodern.”[4] Through this context and presentation, they create a layer between fact and fiction, the real and the imaginary, in which an audience occupy. The sculpture makes the fictional beast a part of our world; as the drawing, metaphorically make us a part of a fantasy world. Bourriaud suggests, “a new type of form is appearing, the journey-form”[5], the place the audience exists is neither here, nor there, but in transition between the two.
This grey area, or ‘transition’ between fact and fiction picks up speed in Lindsay Seer’s Video Installation ‘Extramission 6 (Black Maria)’, part biographical, we enter a temporary space, constructed to host the quasi-documentary. Unlike most of the films being shown at Altermodern; Waldemar Januszczak claims, “What you actually do is watch for a bit, see if it grabs you, then decide to stay or not”[6], and I suppose it is that I could believe the film is actually a biography of a very fascinating life. After taking a seat, I notice the walls are made from some sort of corrugated plastic or cardboard, an unusually, shabby material.
Suffering from a condition called eidetic memory (photographic memory), Seers was too consumed visually with the world around her to ever feel a need to speak to anyone else. Until at the age of eight, she saw a picture of herself, asking, “Is that me?” “Her eidetic memory faded with the onset of language. This traumatic loss of her memory led her to ‘become’ a camera,”[7] and later, a projector. I later discover that the construct hosting the film is a model of a maquette she makes in the film. It is a replica of the first film production studio, built by Thomas Edison, “heralding a decisive moment in the development of photography into film”[8]. It is poignant that we should occupy this mock-up ‘environment’, potentially sociopathic, this manifesting of Seer’s as a mechanical device, removes herself subjectively in place of an objective recording device. Yet, whilst the work is concerned capturing the world around Seers, “it evades the boundaries that are traditionally set up between fact and fiction by asserting that the photographic medium collapses them.”[9]
We are cut off from the rest of the exhibition; boxed in with the footage. A narrator’s comment from a speaker behind me makes it harder to disengage with the film, and re-engage with the outside world. The work reflects Walead Beshty’s ‘FedEx Sculptures’; in the room outside, where battered, cracked two-sided mirrored cubes are presented upon the ‘FedEx’ boxes they have been continually shipped around the globe within. It is this feeling of being boxed in that echoes from every wall, Seers within her own mind, the image within the camera, and me within the Black Maria.
However, for such a chilling work, I find it disgustingly too easy to remove your self from it once outside the Black Maria. For such a remarkable piece of work it is not enough for the Black Maria’s dark presence to haunt you as you peruse other artworks. The contents of the work scream isolation and social removal, and for Bourriaud to surround it with other artworks only suggests to me that he’s perverted a very interesting work to support his own ideas about globalization and increased communication.
Whilst Charles Avery, and Lindsay Seer’s present works that reach out and grab the viewer, immersing them on an personal level. Avery’s work exists much more outwardly in the space, on a curational and contextual level, and whilst Seer’s work was one of the most gripping artworks I witnessed, as an art object existing outwardly into the rest of the show. I’m still to be convinced that placing that kind of work in the location chosen is justified. Whilst both works are blending the line of reality and fantasy, fact and fiction, Avery’s work are complimented by the presence of other works, whilst I feel Seers is dampened.
[1] Richard Dorment – The Telegraph, 2nd February, 2009
[2] Nicholas Bourriaud - Altermodern Exhibition Guide, 2009
[3] Richard Dorment – The Telegraph, 2nd February, 2009
[4] Charles Darwent – The Independent, 8th February, 2009
[5] Nicholas Bourriaud - Altermodern Exhibition Guide, 2009
[6] Waldemar Januszczak – The Times, February 8th, 2009
[7] Altermodern Exhibition Guide, 2009
[8] Altermodern Exhibition Guide, 2009
[9] Altermodern Exhibition Guide, 2009
Venue detail:
Tate Britain »
Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/ 
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