INTERFACE

REVIEW

New Display Strategies: 'What's in it for me?' and Tim Etchells

New Display Strategies: 'What's in it for me?' 17 February – 27 March Seventeen, London 5 February - 28 March Gasworks, London

Reviewed by: Fay Nicolson »

Let Them Eat Cake: An exploration of the subjective and the universal in the works of Tim Etchells and New Display Strategies.

"There was once a city that changed all the time. Some said they were driven by madness or passion, others said they were trapped in a myth, or a story over which they had no control."

This line from the last text in Etchells' series City Changes is a pertinent entrance point into discussing the connections between his first solo exhibition at Gasworks and New Display Strategies' concurrent exhibition 'What's in it for me?' at Seventeen gallery. In both exhibitions, the artists question the frameworks that contain and condition the reception of art and the tension between specialized languages and popular consumption. The notion of being part of a story over which one has no control could equate to the canons and contextualising narratives that an artist finds himself operating within. This sentence also acknowledges the reflexive nature of both exhibitions that, in different ways, seek to trace the marks of their own mechanisms. Both shows also grapple with concerns that extend beyond a studio methodology to the wider considerations of language, history, production and consumption, but with varied approaches to the act of subjective decision making in the face of more objective concerns.

On descending the steps of Seventeen into the cavernous basement, 'What's in it for me?' presents a scattering of totemic and excessive matter. A wooden pyramidal structure houses a large black television screen, casting bright flashes into the darkness. This structure defies easy categorisation: It is a warehouse bed built by a reclusive musician with hippy ideals; it is a miniature stage at an underground music festival; it is an art student's offering made from reclaimed wood. "The pyramid, both a symbol of society and as a space ship/celestial vehicle, is a dominant motif in their research," states the press release. This symbol is echoed in the video; which presents an ecstatic onslaught of shimmering products and busy workers to a backdrop of chaotic noise and colour. A fragmented narrative is drawn between disparate epochs whilst the use of anachronistic advertising aesthetics nods to Marshall McLuhan (the medium is the message).

This piece seems to set out many ideas central to the exhibition, including excess, consumerism and exploitation in relation to mass and artistic production. The other works (two sculptures and a video) are also a rich, seductive mixture of material; appropriated or derivative imagery is combined to form dense and playful objects. The sculpture Historicisation Station is a symmetrical construction of assorted laminate boards. This is adorned with baked dough objects that rest halfway between cake and monument. Along with another sickly smelling gateau sat smugly on a plinth; Kugelhupf tower (like eating only cake), these objects communicate feelings of indulgence, pomp, ambition and insolence. The final work, Banned Calvin Klein Advert is a humorous piece. This overdubbed version of an (already dubiously amusing) banned CK advert from the 90s combines advertising's employment of sex with the art world's seeming propensity for vanity and celebrity. Young hopefuls (that in the original pose as potential models/actors) endure awkward screen tests for what might become a porn film. In New Display Strategies' version the young hopefuls are emerging artists; precocious, edgy or naive, they offer themselves up for scrutiny to the suspect paternal, off-screen voice and the hungry masses.

Although similar in size, the light space of Gasworks is unimposing, unlike the seedy underground basement of Seventeen. Three works sit in the space waiting to unfold; a short video, a photograph and a series of framed A4 texts. Etchells also addresses issues of consumption in his work Art Flavours. This piece equates art to popular confectionary by establishing conditions for an exchange that broaches issues of language, culture, translation and reinterpretation. The video shows a meeting between curator Roberto Pinto and ice-cream maker Osvaldo Castellari in which the former attempts to describe contemporary art practice to the later in terms of four key concepts; 'the body', 'memory', 'spectacle' and 'the archive'. Castellari is then entrusted with translating these ideas into four new flavours of ice-cream. The utterances, "I can't, I'm sorry", "I don't know how to speak" and "this is heavy stuff" anxiously fall from Castellari's mouth. In this explication of contemporary art we witness the way specialised language (a mode of communication that forms the value of what most of us as art professionals do, see and understand) can block meaning and comprehension; isolating and intimidating one who is not familiar with the world it relates to.

In the second scene Castellari is back in control. Comfortable in his white overalls surrounded by ingredients and ice-cream making machinery, we see him successfully grasp and translate complex and often abstract ideas into glutinous edible forms fit for even the most undiscerning tourist. Although initially created for Manifesta 7, this piece still holds its ground without the northern Italian context, which shows the strength of the work and the pertinence of the issues addressed.

City Changes is a series of A4 texts that evolve through a number of tracked changes to explore a notional city. In each iteration, extreme, absurd or frighteningly familiar descriptions of societal infrastructure and behaviour are evoked within the frameworks of a site (the city/page) and an activity (writing/reading), slipping between flux and stasis. In both works Etchells' understanding of performance (as artistic director of Forced Entertainment) is evident in the way that he sets up ludic conversations that are accustomed to chance and failure (between others, and between himself and an audience). Nominated parties are invited and provoked in a process that engages without being didactic.

In contrast, I find the textual elements of 'What's in it for me?' closed and out-moded. The press release self-consciously appropriates and parodies the language of a 'think-tank' and the PDF catalogue hashes out a Burroughs-esque reworking of copy from the Ashmolean Museum's website. If this is a strategy for critique (however self-destructive) it is superficial and unsuccessful. The problem with this exhibition is not necessarily the work itself, which has its place in a particular young, contemporary art scene. It is the tone and approach that New Display Strategies uses to position itself. If one claims to deal with 'history', 'institutions' and 'exploitation' (however ironically) they need to be aware of the pre-existing paradigms and very serious issues that are at stake in these terms.

Gen Doy addresses this point when she states "Postmodern theories of fragmentation, rejection of subjectivity and agency, dismissal of the notion of ideology in favour of 'discourse' or 'performativity', and the rubbishing of so-called totalising master narratives offer little in terms of understanding the political interplay of class, gender, 'race' and sexuality within capitalist societies."¹ Beyond the political issues of museum display (which are explored in depth by works such as Mary Anne Staniszewski's Power of Display or Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum²) there is also the issue of institutional critique, which is a practice that has itself been institutionalised³. New Display Strategies' work exhibits an indulgent subjectivity that is enticing yet fragile.

Rather than existing in a cloud of bombastic assertions, Etchells' work speaks for itself in a way that is both playful and sincere, and Gasworks (as a context) has a track record of delivering exhibitions that seek out dialogues across histories and approaches. Etchells is a proficient mediator, who obviously revels in the problematic and fantastic situations he constructs, whilst mindfully choreographing a play of presence and absence, invitation and instruction with an audience.

¹ Doy, G. (2003) Reflections of multicultural Art History, in N. Addison and L. Burgess (eds), Issues in Art and Design Education. London: Routledge/Falmer. pp. 209.
² The works referred to are: Staniszewski, M. A. (1998) The power of display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art. MIT Press; Fred Wilson? Mining the Museum, co-organised with The Contemporary Museum at the Maryland Historical Society in 1992.
³ Andrea Fraser's From the critique of institutions to an institution of critique published in Art Forum, 2005 outlines the historical and contemporary issues of critiquing institutions.

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