Akimblog
London U.K.
Jeremy Bailey at HTTP Gallery | Anthony Goicolea at Haunch of Venison | Kent Monkman at Stephen Friedman | Liliane Lijn at Riflemaker | Banks Violette at Maureen Paley | Andre Avelas at IBID PROJECTS
posted by Charlene K. Lau - October 9th, 2008.
As the autumn wind seeps through the windows into my room, I think about the long days ahead, staying inside with mugs of tea and chipping away at my dissertation. I am halfway there, but feel like the end is a million miles away. What better distraction than to see what's going on down the street?
Fellow Canadian Jeremy Bailey (of the wondrous 640 480 collective) is showing at HTTP Gallery, a five-minute jaunt from my new house in North London. I met up with Jeremy for Sunday roast at the nearby Salisbury Hotel. We discussed Canadian art and politics. I ponder whether I will be a good citizen and vote in the upcoming election.
Jeremy Bailey, WarMail, 2008, performance screen shot
Having lived in Berlin for the past number of months, Jeremy was in London for a residency at HTTP which culminated in the exhibition The Jeremy Bailey Show and a performance of his latest venture, the email/war/expression hybrid interface WarMail. In demonstrating this service - a weapon designed for future intergalactic wars and a communication system for humans living in multiple solar systems - his performance was hilarious and collaborative. He instructed the audience (via movement, sound and light) to fire missiles with the goal of sending an e-mail to his mom. A by-product of all this is a musical composition comprised of all the missile hits. Along with his previous projects, VideoPaint 3.0 and segments of SOS (a visual operating system) on the Toronto television show King Kaboom, WarMail gives the exhibition a clubby/party room-feel that says, "Technology is fun!" Indeed. It even convinced a Luddite like me.
Anthony Goicolea, Related 2b, 2008, digital C-print (courtesy of Haunch of Venison)
In a decidedly more distant jaunt to Central London, I rack up exhibitions in the Mayfair district. First is Cuban- American artist Anthony Goicolea's solo London-debut at Haunch of Venison entitled Related. The exhibition excavates Goicolea's personal history of known and unknown Cuban relatives via photographic imagery. All the works draw on black and white photographs and seem immediately nostalgic to the modern eye. The anonymous images are haunting and a little eerie. They remind me of the ghostly portraits printed on ceramic ovals on my ancestor's tombstones in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery. As with those faces, I have the feeling of knowing by sight, but not by memory. Goicolea's series of C-prints overlaid with acrylic paint stand somewhere between two and three dimensions. I do a double take, squinting at the staples on a telephone pole to make sure they are indeed photographed (yes, they were). Also of interest are vitrines filled with graphite on Mylar drawings of Goicolea's grandmother's skeleton. Each body part is precious and boxed into its own compartment, creating something like reliquary-type artifacts. I like the unforced and organic way in which Goicolea fuses mediums; he brings seemingly disparate elements seamlessly.
Kent Monkman, Forest with Trees, 2008, acrylic on canvas (courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery)
My next stop is Kent Monkman's first solo exhibition in Europe at Stephen Friedman. I remember being impressed with how Monkman transformed the cold, white cube-ness of the MOCCA in Toronto into a lush parlour. Here, he has applied his nineteenth-century salon-style aesthetic to posh Mayfair so convincingly one could mistake the space for an antiquities gallery with its deep maroon-painted walls. The gilt-framed paintings depict American painter and “ethnographer” George Catlin in action, documenting North American aboriginals. Only, as always with Monkman, there is a twist. He imagines Catlin painting colonial landscapes populated with decorative and flamboyant Native American “dandies” sporting feathers, velvet and fur in crassly bright colours. Monkman is a master of the pastoral pastiche and I always enjoy his visual trickery. To further the camp quotient, he has painted portraits of stoic tribes people with their dandy-selves etched into the background like Disney caricature-style apparitions. By distilling old myths, he creates new ones.
Liliane Lijn, Heavenly Fragments, 2008, Aerogel
I made my first trip ever to Riflemaker, a gallery set up in 2004 in a former rifle workshop and the West end's oldest public building. The interior has been preserved and serves as a nice contrast to the regular bleakness of most galleries, but I do wonder how neutral this space can be for art. Liliane Lijn's exhibition Stardust needn’t worry as it plunges one into darkness. The outcome of a NASA-funded residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, California, Lijn’s work relies on Aerogel, a material that collects cometary and interstellar dust. Bits of Aerogel have been torn into pieces and sit in vitrines like precious gems, illuminated by video projections. In the background, music relating to the theme of stardust plays lazily. When I was there, Frank Sinatra's vocals made for a bizarre but very cool contrast of the old-timey with the ultra-new. The resulting parlour-sci-fi atmosphere was distinctly cinematic and alien.
Banks Violette, as yet untitled (broken screen), 2008, aluminium, fiberglass, wood, epoxy, ash, steel, steel hardware, sandbags, duct tape (courtesy of Maureen Paley)
On a trek to the East end, I stopped off at Maureen Paley to check out Banks Violette's current show. Having only read about him, I had preconceptions of the artist as a hyped hipster before I even stepped in. The exhibition confirmed my assumption, but, I must admit, was better than I had envisioned. In a darkened room, a galloping white horse was projected on water vapour. I can’t deny the “wow” factor here, as it was indeed mesmerizing. Upstairs, huge room-sized aluminum panels coated in glossy black epoxy confronted me like menacing Darth Vader-Richard Serras. I liked that they weren't too careful, too perfect. One of the panels is crumpled, as if it had been in a car crash. All of the support systems are visible: scaffolding, sandbags, duct tape. I am still wary, however, of this futuristic doom and gloom aesthetic that continues to obsess a certain artistic generation. I too am enamoured by Goth style, but wonder just how much longer it will last before I become bored.
André Avelãs, Untitled, 2008, latex balloons, tubing, extractor, musical instruments (courtesy of the artist and IBID PROJECTS)
My East end travels ended with a visit to André Avelãs's show at IBID PROJECTS. Three huge weather balloons fill the gallery. Printed on them is the phrase, “HIGHLY FLAMMABLE.” It’s fun to work my way through the gallery as they bump into one another. The sound of their inflation drones on as the balloons are fitted with discreet wind instruments. I initially thought it was the result of air pumps, but find a melodica hooked up to a balloon. Still, I see the work as far more sculptural than sonic. Bumping into balloons creates an amusing exploration of navigating an altered space, but the sound? Just a mere side note.
Charlene K. Lau is a London-based writer, artist and idea-maker whose reviews have recently been published in Canadian Art. She is currently studying towards her MA in History and Culture of Fashion at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts.
HTTP Gallery: http://www.http.uk.net/
Jeremy Bailey: The Jeremy Bailey Show continues until October 19.
Haunch of Venison: http://www.haunchofvenison.com/en/
See website for current exhibitions.
Stephen Friedman Gallery: http://www.stephenfriedman.com/
Kent Monkman continues until October 9.
Riflemaker: http://www.riflemaker.org/s-index
Lilian Lijn: Stardust continues until October 31.
Maureen Paley: http://www.maureenpaley.com/
Banks Violette continues until October 21.
IBID PROJECTS: http://www.ibidprojects.com/
See website for current exhibitions.