I am intrigued. Critical reviews of BAS 8 have been mixed, and I want to see for myself what curators Anna Colin and Lydia Yee have chosen as the 'best of British art' of the last five years.
In the entrance hall I am attracted by a series of 2-D ceramic heads in profile by Jesse Wine, each with a small motif - a fish, an eggcup. They are simple in concept and do not need explanation, each exuding its own personality. The first large room is dominated by two large 2-D Jesse Wine ceramics, one 'Still Life' (2015 1.9m x 2.7m), echoing the work of Giorgio Morandi, but with an autobiographical touch in the form of a Sports Direct mug. The second 'The whole vibe of everything' (2015) draws on the images of a stork and a branch from an old Japanese print. These pieces are less overtly tactile, accessible and child-like than much of Wine's work. I find them a little self-conscious and less immediately expressive than I expected of Wine's ceramics.
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| Jesse Wine 'the whole vibe of everything' (2015) |
Nearby Bedwyr Williams' film 'Century Egg' looms ridiculously larger-than-life on a wide black screen set within a large broken eggshell made of some obviously artificial substance. The comedy stage is set, but the film itself leaves a mixed impression. Its starting point is the bog man 'Tollund Man', played by Williams, lying in slimy archaeological situ, musing on how a future archaeologist will interpret the artefacts of a Cambridge drinks party ('what if they were all struck down while doing a sedate conga'). The dense, almost impenetrable, combination of surreal associations, laboured philosophical musings and random imagery is, well, rather long. There are some memorable moments - the Wallace and Gromit-like on-off switch denoting the passage of time, the surreal Chinese black egg served to the disgust of the guests, the shots of rocks from large to electron-microscope scale, the classical sculptures that look to Williams like they have 'big sweat and big breath'. There are some interesting statements that tempt critical unpicking - 'how long would we have to keep shaping until all the rocks were something that we'd shaped'. However, I notice that none of the visitors watches the film for more than ten seconds or so. Patiently, I sit through most of it, but even I, with an assignment to think of, find suddenly that I cannot devote a second more of my life to it. The witty Williams is apparently motivated not by his own cleverness, but by the satisfaction that the parody of art-science he has created will force art critics to sit still and strain their intellects for a seemingly impossible period. I wonder to myself how many did...
With some relief I glance at Pablo Bronstein's monochrome 18thC architectural wallpapers, their clean lines stretching from floor to ceiling. At least they give you space to think. Two arty looking middle-aged women walk past me, returning to the front door. I take the opportunity to interview them about the show. They are distinctly underwhelmed. One is a painter, the other has a daughter who is an artist. Both have visited twice, and greatly enjoyed, the RSA Open Exhibition of contemporary work (RSA 28 Nov 2015 - 14 Feb 2016). The painter says of BAS 8, 'It's too arty, up its a..., too cerebral... the materials don't connect, they don't reflect our place on the planet'. Her friend says, 'I need to feed a strong connection to a piece that makes me feel connected to everything. I am not getting that here.'
I seek out the next room hopefully, with Caroline Achaintre's shaggy tufted canvas tribal textiles large on the wall. They are, according to the statement, 'the uncomfortable middle-ground' between figuration and abstraction, attraction and repulsion. They look uncannily like tasteless 70s shag pile rugs that have seen a bit of wear. The yarn has a 70s appearance, not pure wool, not well-coloured but half-faded poor-quality chemical dyes. I can see they might have an element of humour in them, a parody of a 70s aesthetic perhaps? I find them more repulsive than attractive, and I wonder if repulsion is the desired emotional response. Yet it is not even real repulsion - they just seem to have something a little tired about them. On the floor are Anthea Hamilton's large perspex cut-outs of sexualised pop icons which, on closer inspection, have ants crawling along inside them, reminiscent of the children's section of the natural history museum.
Upstairs is a room with several old-fashioned black TV sets with white words flashing on them - the names of race horses apparently. The TV wires trail depressingly across the floor. I just don't get it and something about the room makes me want to leave. I notice that not a single person spends any time in this room. Whatever it is Charlotte Rodger wants to say remains, deliberately or otherwise, in the happily irrelevant realm of superfluous information.
Across the hall I am struck by what I take to be three attractive abstracts, entitled 'Fabulous Beasts'. Looking more closely I see that the Berlin-based artist Simon Fujiwara has shaved the hair off fur coats and stretched the meticulously sewn fragments of skin over frames. I like these quiet enigmatic pieces that seem to hold a tactile beauty in their own nakedness. They require no explanation, but speak of the labour involved in creating luxury items. His 10 minute film 'Hello', created from overlapping interviews with a Mexican rubbish picker and a middle-class German computer expert, 'illustrates' his concept. I prefer the understatement of the fur coats.
Finally, I find a small back room, almost tripping over the enamelled construction pipework of Nicolas Deshayes 'Becoming Soil'. The metal and plastic pipes are decorated with enamel to give an impression of some natural process occurring. According to the statement, Deshayes modifies the surfaces of pristine materials to make them look, 'toxic or contaminated and therefore closer to something corporeal'. They look like pipes with enamel on them to me, neither contaminated nor particularly corporeal.
In the last back room, monochrome images move on a screen. I sit down and am drawn into James Richards' film 'Raking Light'. For the full 7 minutes and 5 seconds I am rapt. Each image demands close looking and has a beauty to it. Rather than struggling to disentangle a concept, I am instinctively aware that this is a work simply about the act of looking. Perhaps I am attracted by the abstracted images of the natural world, or by the use of light, movement, texture, scale. Whatever it is, I certainly find a strong emotional response that short-circuits the cerebral but does not discount it.
On balance, I think I agree with the lady I interviewed. However interesting or clever the concept, I need also to feel an emotional connection to engage with the art. I wonder if that intangible quality has something to do with the way in which each creator approaches the making process.
