A couple of weeks ago I went to see David Shrigley's exhibition at The Hayward Gallery. To me, he seemed like a clever cartoonist. Most of the pieces depended on captions written either directly on the picture, or close by. For example, a rough-drawn fist with the writing, FIGHT THE NOTHINGNESS. Or the cow looking back at the woman milking it, and saying WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? I found the cartoons funny, but did wonder what the hell I was doing, there...
Joy in People
Jeremy Deller's work at the Hayward Gallery was remarkably varied, but not much interested me very much. A crushed, rusted car. A functioning tea shop. A 3D film of bats. An outline map of of the UK with Iraqi place names and a similar one of Iraq with UK place names. A film of wrestlers. A set of stamping machines that you could put sheets of paper in to spell out phrases like HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY and A GROUP OF PEOPLE STANDING OUTSIDE A CLOSED DAY CENTRE. It all seems to me to be not nearly as clever as it thinks it is.
To the River
This exhibition by Sophy Rickett at The Arnolfini in Bristol was a video installation with various screens. The screens show various people hanging around waiting for the Severn Bore. And there are recordings of the crowd as they wait. The river and the landscape are never shown. All we have are the people and what they say. And what they talk about is interesting: a fox dead in the tide-line; the stress around crossing the weir at night.
It was interesting, the way the screens and voices arranged around the room. It created a brilliant, sombre and moving atmosphere.
Someone Else
Another exhibition at The Arnolfini in Bristol, this time by Indian artist, Shilpa Gupta. A Singing Cloud was extraordinary, a large object made of 4000 microphones with an audio loop. My favourite was a Motion Flap-Board that reminded me of the noticeboards at train stations. It flipped through a number of statements. Gupta says she is interested in 'the media that we employ...and the loss of the inherent gap that takes place during the process of communication. I am interested in the process of absence, which could take place in the authoritative mode of history writing, of censorship, or simply even how our actions are largely controlled by the unconscious'. I thought if I wrote this out it would make more sense. It doesn't.
