INTERFACE

REVIEW

Lobby

Cell Project Space, London
7 November - 6 December

Reviewed by: Fay Nicolson »

'Lobby' brings together eight artists with common interests and approaches to making; the press release mentions issues of social space, architecture and the built environment. In fact, the press release is heavy with the promise of social critique and ideological perspectives. On the surface, the exhibition also presents a certain artistic zeitgeist that can be seen in galleries such as Limoncello and Moot (which perhaps could be described as works that resist language and literal readings, a focus on formal and compositional relations, and the absorption of everyday materials and simple gestures into creative practice). In this way there is definitely a tension between the language that contextualises the works and the exhibition itself.

On entering the gallery we walk into an antechamber containing two paintings and a sculpture. Imperfect Square and Cold Shoulder by Charlie Danby are large white canvases transversed by lines of pink highlighter and graphite. Referring to the notion of a lobby as an institutional or corporate space of reception and potential limbo between the 'outside' (for 'anyone') and the 'inner sanctum' (for 'artists and the invited public'), I can imagine these paintings hanging in such a context. Yet, the administrative materials of highlighter and pencil refer to and critique this reading. Are Danby's aesthetics a critical strategy or a sincere gesture?

Francesca Nobilucci's works are also problematic but in a way that begins to unpick the surface of the exhibition. Hi-Fi Handmade replica of Ikea Benna Tower CD Rack resembles a readymade but is in fact a hand crafted object. This links outwards to the standardised, flat-pack revolution that has overtaken the homes of Europe, and also links inwards to critique the use of the 'everyday' in sculpture, as well as notions of manufacture and the replica in contemporary practice. Her print on canvas of an artificial orchid called Faux Pas also deals with authenticity and simulacra, and in its existence the print is an allegorical object standing for something other than itself. With its 'off the shelf' aesthetic it is the kind of object we would expect to see in a waiting room, or perhaps some (non-artist's) lounge. By bringing it into a gallery, Nobilucci is breaking an art rule and illuminating this cultural boundary. This is an interesting gesture, but in fact succeeds at championing arts propensity for self reference, indulgence and exclusivity.

The works in the second room are playfully arranged in relation to one another, in a way that mirrors the geometry existing in the pieces themselves. Lieke Snellen's sculptures adopt office and building materials that are combined and connected to create makeshift sculptures. Their form is both visually seductive and arbitrary. Mick Peter's work perhaps relates most directly to notions of success/failure in civic sculpture and negotiating the legacies of modern and utopian ideals. Lumpy, grey, geometric shapes stand and support each other. Its texture parodies concrete and its use in both art and architecture and, unlike civic sculpture, it is human scale, handmade and imperfect. Hanging from separate vertical planes are two sausage forms. These seem a bit Franz West, or Paul McCarthy-like, and reference phallic monuments in a state of impotence. It is humorous, in that crap, self-deprecating way so common to the British psyche.

Beyond another wall we enter a third, smaller space containing work by Karen Cunningham and the initiator of the project, Sefano Calligaro. I struggle with Cunningham's work. Although it adopts everyday materials (fabric suspended by string, a slightly charred wine rack and a small clay sculpture) I cannot see how it relates to notions of "social engagement, free will and new ageism" as stated in the press release. I can only assume that Cunningham has developed her own syntax of materials and compositions, her choice of forms perhaps having some history within her own body of work.

Nobilucci's crumpled and re-flattened page stating "Die Collector Scum" attempts provocation. This page is a magazine reproduction of a Merlin Carpenter painting. Through re-appropriating this work is Calligaro rejecting this ironic painted statement, is he agreeing with it, or just holding it up for us to observe at an interesting economic moment? Calligaro's other work Untitled Roll is a simple resolution of sculptural material and printed image. A large square and a small cylinder of cork partially covered in a print are succinctly formal and strangely familiar, relating to temporary carriers of visual information (notice boards and tubes).

Simon and Tom Bloor's work engages in the defunct language of modernist art and architecture. Their framed gouache drawing of interlinked cuboids mimics the dot pattern of screen printed images, yet again playing with industrial processes and the handmade. Their plinth and model of a golden structure also combine ideas of utopian and crafted forms through associations with the clarity of science and mathematics and the human traces of a DIY aesthetic. I have left these artists until last as they exemplify my general response to the exhibition; that it is unfortunately less than the sum of its parts. In the press release Simon and Tom Bloor are credited with "crossing the boundaries between design, philosophy and social history", yet within this exhibition their work loses its potential to enter disciplines beyond contemporary art due to the way art has absorbed (and sterilised) the visual legacies of the modern ideal. As a project in process it definitely has potential, yet I feel it either needs to redefine its terms of existence or else reconsider the constraints of the 'social space' of the gallery itself, which is not in fact a lobby but an 'inner sanctum'.

Venue detail:
Cell Project Space »
(Dunn Street loading doors), 38-50 Arcola Street, LONDON E8 2DJ

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