There is something sinister in this power relation between the older and the younger male. The red clothing of the younger almost, if not a cassock, are suggestive of the clothing worn by choir boys. The male in black appears more like a religious figure, in his uniform.  A not fully articulated and ghost-like form appears to be realising itself behind the boy. The question is how powerful is the dominant male, is it power over or some sort of transference to the younger one that he is trying to achieve? That this happens on a stage has all the implications of a performance that The Hypnotist as title implies; but yet the articulation of the bodies, the older males physical gesture shows effort, whilst the younger male appears passive and receptive or powerless and immobile. Power and age stand in opposition to youth and good looks.

It is in this moment of suspense, in this particular frame of the narrative, in the non-telling and the un-known, where we are essentially left to consider the motives of the individuals that this painting really works.

1. Alan Woods, Pictures emphasising Stillness, pg 36; David Hockney, edited by Paul Melia, Manchester University Press, 1995

Author – Mona Casey

Where to see it:

Currently Touring as part of the David Hockney Retrospective

Tate Britain, London, 9^th Feb – 29^th May 2017

Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, 21^st June – 23^rd October 2017

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 27^th November 2017 – 25^th February 2018

I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing William Kentridge performing live, in say one of his performance-lectures, but there is a significant account of his presence in the work he makes and in the documentation of his process which persists in the many books on his work; but here the theatre and acting background really begin to make sense. It is in his ‘being’ in relation to a history of the world (be that art, society and so on), to the development of science and the ever-present momentum of time and in his physicality, his body (draped in consistent black trousers and white shirt) that we apprehend the brilliance and the humanity of this creative producer. It is in this juxtaposition that the work really becomes poignant. The endeavour and determination to stride forth over that chair in a repetitive act and find your place and make your mark within the history of time, science and Africa’s colonial and postcolonial development is evident in one of the opening installations of this show called The Refusal of Time (2012).

The work is comprised of five projections, a collection of crates and panels, four megaphones suspended from the ceiling, a series of chairs and a mechanical wooden sculpture which is placed on the floor in the centre of the space. It’s also worth mentioning that two of the walls of the space have been built specially for this show and are stud with the wooden frame exposed and facing into the installation space. There are two projections on each of these opposing stud walls and one larger projection in the middle. The work in its entirety lasts for thirty minutes and has a definitive beginning and end with a two-minute pause before the sequence starts again. This as a strategy works well, as it encourages a sense of anticipation in the waiting, more strategically aligned to theatrical productions. This choreography cannot be underestimated, we are gathering, seating ourselves, getting ready for the action to begin. The chairs both swivel and static are positioned and marked with white paint on the floor, their location is specific and we can be in no doubt of this. The apparatus – pump – breathing machine-hybrid is moving and marking time, paced in a constant momentum. Its actions both vertical and lateral, echo the mechanisms of an oil pumpjack and the expanding lungs and ribcage of the body respectively. Depending where you locate yourself within the installation, seated or standing, you may view images through this, it filters and interrupts your experience.

Sound, vision, erupts, the first chapter begins. We are confronted with a ticking metronome on all screens. The beat of time, the musicians pace maker is present and then interrupted by a band, trombones, voices, the kind of brass band we associate with a New Orleans procession and emerged from military histories and the communication of orders and movements in battle. There are silhouettes, which walk on from the left screen and process gradually through the remaining screens, here we are confronted with the march of the disaffected, those on the move carrying their possessions on their heads, and then the instrument playing band brings up the rear. Kentridge then brings us back to the studio, stepping elegantly over a chair, never faltering, despite the obstacle. We see collages of text, Angola, Sierra Leone, maps of the world, and more spoken word, talking about a journey, a journey through history which the artist brings us on, starting with Atlas carrying the globe on his shoulder. The narrative describes invention and inventions, “propaganda by action”, “gravitational fields”, “no trace of light”, “blackholes” and “wavelengths” and the physic of the Universe, the event horizon and eventual “black darkness”. The projections, move from black and white collaged animations, to a range of performance elements, including scenes where performers wear paper and painted costumes, and perform infidelity in domestic spaces through to the development of scientific discovery in The Royal Observatory, Club Autonomie, Dakar, the Telegraph Office, London and the artist’s studio. The sets comprise of illusory painted staging, with physical objects and moves to other stop-frame constructions reminiscent of Georges Melies film and sets. The production values in The Refusal of Time, are varied, spliced, collaged and always visually compelling. The pace and evolution of the work successfully brings us through stages of quieter passages, where we need to hear the male voice and story-telling to crescendos of sound, noise and a sense of urgency. The work is a journey and we are invited to participate through our physical positioning in the space and visual of the work. We as audience along with the wooden shipping boxes are temporary participants and temporal extant’s in Kentridge’s play of ‘Here I am” and “praise of productive procrastination”.

There are a number of other stand-out pieces of work in this show, including Second-Hand Reading, (2013) a projection of a flip book and Right Into Her Arms, (2016) an animated puppet theatre. Second-Hand Reading is an animated book, a dictionary, with drawings of landscapes, Modernist shapes, texts and of Kentridge himself. It starts at the beginning at A and with the slightest of juddery movements, which suggest its construction, makes its way finally to Z. It is accompanied by a piece of piano music by Neo Muyanga, and we are given text that suggests that ‘which ever page you open’, ‘there you are’.

Author: Mona Casey

Almeida’s work is meticulously produced, and in it she questions the action of painting, the body as performer and the space between the spectator, the canvas and the artist gesture. She makes series of works titled, Inhabited Canvas, Inhabited Drawing and Seduce. The works here are nearly all B&W photographs with elements such as acrylic paint, horsehair thread and pen. The Inhabited Canvas series of 1975 – 1976, are fascinating works in that they disrupt your sense of where you are sited as viewer. The use of mirror and reflection and Almeida’s hand with brush, altering through versions, de-stabilises our position in relation to the image, her body as represented by the image and the physical stuff of the paint.

The evolution of the paint itself as the image sequences, in the work, Study for inner Improvement (1976) sees the blue paint applied as if in the air itself, where it becomes form, a form that is consumed through the mouth by the artist portrait. Here the artist as corporeal and photograph is challenged by the real substance of paint. Another Study for Inner improvement (1977), sees the paint become stuff and form that can be picked up and moved from the ether to being placed in the artist’s pocket.

Inhabited drawings, (1977), B&W Photograph, Horsehair (6 elements), is a narration of the making process. Image 1, a line is drawn on a photograph of paper, the shadow hand and pen is visible, a black line-pen is evident. The shadow hand begins in Image 2 to adjust the line. In 3 – the line is puckered. In 4 the line is made three dimensional and physical as a protruding element. 5. The pen break through the film that is the paper and we see the nib as breaking the surface between the images world and our physical space and reality. The thread-line protrudes even more. 6. The pen, the line and the artists finger moves further into the space between one world and another. The veil between worlds is absolutely transgressed.

Illusion made physical is an inherent part of Helena Almeida’s work as is performance. The performative act as a way to test ideas to do with the act of being an artist, a woman and politically minded are demonstrate in this exhibition. The act of artist as painter is more fully explored in the earlier 1970’s works and the later more recent pieces delve more substantially into the artist’s body as tool. In a series of large photographs titled, Inside Me (18 elements) 1998, we see the artist dressed in black in a number of incumbent positions on the floor. It’s as if at moments she is documenting her own death. ‘This is what I could look like dead’, is almost what she shouts at us to acknowledge. Maybe this work represents some form of death or collapse. Some of the images seem more hopeless than others and are better images for it. When her legs are upright or falling down, there is the suggestion of some life, but maybe we are seeing a lingering evolution, paused, re-winded, forwarded, paused. This sequence of images, test the best version, the ideal image of collapse. The fact that we are looking at a performance for camera, is strategically suggested by the curatorial decision to place opposite the work Seduce, B &W Photographs, 2 elements (2002). This work shows the artist standing, her back to us, and leaning to the left in one and the right in the other. This suggests the limbering up process for getting the body warm before the photo –shoot, work begins. Im still unsure as to whether this is a good decision. It reinforces the liveness and action of the performer, and perhaps as such could be seen to undermine the poignancy of the artist auto-documentation of her inevitable demise, and her ability to control that image. Almeida’s, desire to do this is evident in her enthusiasm for her face to be seen in the earlier works, a fact that is no longer made visible to us in the more recent works, now she is older. Now her focus is on the clothed and articulated body, hair covers the facial expression.

There are many works, worth mentioning in this show, but the one other that stands out is Study for the work Seduce, Video Projection, B&W. This is a sequence of video chapters, of the artist trying to balance on one leg wearing a high heel shoe. The continuing performance, shows us the many attempts to balance successfully on one leg, but the failure is evident. She uses a stool, she swops feet, in order to give each a rest, and as time goes on it is clear that the high heel hurts her and she makes sounds to that effect against the backdrop of classical music. The work explodes the convention of the necessity for women to be a certain type of femininity in society and the difficulty in reality of achieving these ideals.

Jankowski was influenced in his thinking by the number of Zünfte or Guilds which still exist in this city and many of the newly commissioned works are built upon a collaboration between artist and non-artist. Manifesta 11, has been divided into four primary outpourings, which occur in different collections of venues or collections of work. The first concept is The Historical Exhibition: Sites under Construction, part A at Löwenbräukunst and part B at Helmhaus, the 2nd section is called Satellites and these thirty works are scattered at different sites across the city. In this section we witness the collaborative workings of artist and work professional. Artists such as John Arnold, Maurizio Catalan, Ceal Floyer, Santiago Sierra etc. have made works which are housed in multiple locations or focus on different points of interest such as Arnolds, Friends Corner and Palestine Grill or Ceal Floyer’s sound installation at Universität Zurich. Part C and the 3rd section of Manifesta is the newly built Pavilion of Reflections, a wooden structure built in Lake Zurich, which hosts a screen with seating, a bar and cafe, viewing platform and a swimming area with changing rooms, where you can simultaneously swim and watch art documentaries. Part 4 or the D section is titled Caberet Der Kunstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire. In order to witness this program in the Performance Hall at Caberet Voltaire, which runs throughout the duration of Manifesta, you have to become a member of the Artist Guild. To become a member you have to submit a concept for a Joint-Venture Performance, this team comprising an artist and a non-artist. Thus in order to access this section of the event, you must become a participant and performer. Alongside these sections, there are also a number of Parallel Events of which 38 projects were shortlisted out of 340 submissions, with eleven receiving funding support from Manifesta. Some of these projects include the launch of issue 30, Work, Migration and Personal Geopolitic from OnCurating, published by Zurich University of the Arts and an exhibition by Palais de Tokyo at production space Acrush called Your memories are our Future.

This edition of Manifesta has a number of stand-out features; the most significant is the physical display structure employed by Jankowski to curate groups of work under specific thematic headings; memorable pieces of new work including Jon Rafman’s Open Heart Warrior video and Jon Kessler’s, The World is Cuckoo (Clock), which comprises a number of elements, as well as recent  work including Mark Leckey’s Degradations 2015, a digital animation, Wermke/Leinkauf video work Symbolic Threats, 2015 and historical works including Chris Burden’s TV Commercials 1973 – 1977 and Michael Smith’s, How to Curate your Own Group Exhibition, 1996. An element of this Manifesta, which became increasingly important over my three day visit was the video-documentaries made with as Jankowski titled them, Art Detectives. These works involve young people with different backgrounds interviewing key artists and documenting the concepts behind works and the progress between the artist and their selected professional. These docu-works give real insight into the collaborative process, the views of the participants and the curious questioning and summations of the art detectives. They become a nuanced device and voice with which to mediate the works and inform audiences from art professionals, to young people and the wider community. It works also because there is a deliberateness to whom the art detective is and the project they investigate; for example in the work Nesting Box, the detective was herself a student of Latin, so had an array of knowledge which she could draw on to discuss and contextualise the particular area of knowledge that this coupling, artist Shelly Neadashi and Margaretha Debrunner a high school teacher of Latin and Greek working in Zurich, had in common.

The Historical Exhibition: Sites under Construction – Contextualising the display strategy

Co-curator Francesca Gavin

I made a decision to see the Pavillon Le Corbusier, whilst in Zurich. This was the final building he designed and was purposed as the ideal space for the architect to exhibit his art. It became apparent that Jankowski was clearly influenced for his Historical Exhibitions: Sites under Construction structuring device by both this buildings design and function as an exhibition space. The pre-fabricated materiality of Le Corbusier’s steel and glass elements and the inter-changeable display potentials, clean, grey, linear lines, bolted together, was too much of a coincidence to ignore. The panels, in Le Corbusier’s building, red, yellow, grey, black and white, whilst not as a colour-way adhered to by the curator here, are used by Jankowski to create visual excitement, breaks, gestures in the open modular form and the structure of the display. Jankowski in his series of exhibitions for Manifesta, uses works instrumentally as colour marks, within the groupings of collections. It is when truly committed to a painterly practice and a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the selection and arrangement of the works upon the physical structure that the collections of works operate not just as singular concept, but also have aesthetic coherence, even if in the process the individual works lose most of their autonomy. This is also more profound in the rooms of Helmhaus, where the ceilings and floors are also painted white.

This gesture and instrumentalisation of the works of others, can clearly be a problem, even more so for someone who is himself an artist, so used to the negotiations with curators around the displays of artwork. Is the willingness to work with Jankowski at such a prestigious large European exhibition worth the risk to the individual work? As with any group presentation of artworks, it becomes a contest as to who’s work can survive the juxtapositions outside the studio space. There are also other interesting questions regarding the potential hierarchies at play here (Diagramme: Jankowski concept and aesthetic device – works given their own space outside of the physical structure – the group collection – individual works within the collection) such as the relation between the collections and the non-group, individually installed works. This is an interesting problem in terms of the flow of the exhibition. These works do provide pauses in the pace of viewing. This reminds me of the viewers retinal, time-based scanning of the paintings of Mondrian, where our eye is held for periods of time on a block of colour, depending on its scale and tonal weight in the composition. But unlike Mondrian, we are not working with a receding and protruding depth of field, but like Mondrian we are given in this arrangement a linear, shuttling experience, with a full-stop. The decision to include Mark Leckey in one of the HE (Historical Exhibition) sections is interesting in that Leckey himself plays with the staging of collections of work (for example see exhibition The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, Nottingham Contemporary, 2013). The presentation is also strongly reminiscent of Richard Hamilton’s, exhibition Man, Machine and Motion, shown originally at the ICA London, in 1955, at Dover Street and then re-presented more recently in the current ICA premises in 2014. Hamilton’s installation was a devised, steel, hanging structure and support for photographic prints of images taken from media and categorised under the headings, Aquatic, Terrestrial, Aerial and Interplanetary. The modular system suggests and allows for a flexibility in the arrangement of the print elements. The potential for interchangeable components but within a structured system is enabled. Hamilton too was influenced by Dada, the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. Within Jankowki’s approach we can see many similarities, in terms of exhibition design and the creation of a number of discreet thematic groupings. The mechanics of the HE structures also suggest the possibility of other works in the world, taking the place of the selected works, if they have the right credentials, i.e. theme, colour and scale. The world is potentially full of other replacement options which alludes to a certain homogenization of artwork depending on their conceptual and aesthetic currency. The other point worth addressing here is the articulation of the various HE structures within the rooms of the gallery spaces. They are sometimes short straight lines, sometimes they are made up of 2/3/5/or 6 structured arms. They for the main part replace the existing walls of the spaces and speak to a determination to not be limited by the buildings architectural elements. The other advantage of this approach is the inevitable looking thought the metal lines (a type of rude screen) to other works behind or the interruption of other work in the visual reading of the foregrounded collections. This creates a ‘behind’ the primary frontal view, where we can see the mechanism of attachments, the script of work details, the technological requirements. We are been shown the gallery wall again but through the arrangement of forged steel bars, similar to Lucio Fontana’s canvas slice invite to look at the space beyond the surface. Two of the most successful renderings of this approach were the sections Art as a Second Profession and Professions Performing in Art in that they both realised very successfully the ideas above.

The HE (Historical Exhibition) themes

The Manifesta umbrella concept of What People do for Work, is divided into a number of proposals, which could be retro-active research possibilities for further more extensive development and future exhibitions. Some of the sites under construction are individual historical works, some new works and of course collections of works from different moments in history. Groupings of work exist under titles such as Portraits of Professions, Break Hour, Professions in the Art World, Working Worlds, Art as a Second Profession, etc. The labelling system become very important in the mediation of both the collections and the individual detailing of the work within the grouping. It is the individual labelling process which enables the work to shift back to an unstable autonomy. The echoing museological approach, demonstrating the concept of the collection of individual elements as the generator of taxonomies.  Artists adopting Professions, is one of the group shows within the exhibition and looks at the reality for artists of having to do other kinds of work in order to make a living. From artmaking alone, are only so few able to survive. That art is made not in a vacuum but enhances and provides content which is expressed in the artwork is also crucial to this section. Here we see artists such as Fatima Al Qadiri (musician and artist) & Khali Al Gharaballi (fashion stylist), with their video work of a well-known Kuwaiti actor who plays the role of mature women at a time when it was unacceptable for women to perform in public. Taocheng Wang’s beautiful fleshy watercolours depicting scenes and narratives from the massage salon. The lobster paintings of Evelyne Axeill, who was originally an actress and screenwriter and in later life turned to painting representations of female sexuality before her death in 1972. Other artist whose works are in this section include Vuk Cosic, Steven Clayton and Kim Gordon. Each of the categories here include works by artists who epitomise art historical moments, well-known artists, little known and occasionally anonymous makers. So whilst hierarchical structures exist within the show overall, the selection of a work from an oeuvre and its placement alongside the work of another artist (variously placed on the professional ladder), provides a counter argument and great leveler.

Individual Works of Note:

HE 1. Jon Rafman – Open Heart Warrior, 2016, Video commissioned by Manifesta 11 with support from Seventeen Gallery, London, UK.

“Your idols are dead and your enemies are in power”

“You are wandering in a remote empty space”

“Pretend you are a moth flying”

This is some of the dialogue that you hear as you slide into the low slung body hugging chair sited on the ground of this three screen video and sound work. There is one seat, one opportunity to be immersed in, surrounded by digital imagery, which runs from the symbolic, disturbed shaven headed man knocking his head over and over against a door to lush seasonal landscapes, snow, sun, autumnal leaves and so on. Breaking through the narrative and disrupting these beautiful, clearly digitised landscapes are the things that lie beneath, other worlds are hinted at, darker, moodier images interrupt and break through the surface. Increasingly we are being shown another world, bloodied bodies, ribcages, distorted carcasses on the streets. “You are a slave to your body” have we entered the consciousness of our minds, is this the transition from the need for bodies to a virtual world, where bodies are no longer required? “Do you hear that – it’s the knowledge you seek”. Our view is perceptually shifted from one world to another. From landscapes where we are induced by the female voice, to enter into a meditative state and relax our bodies, the back, the torso, shoulders, arms and so on, to the insistent toiling of a bell and a male voice asking us “what year is it anyway”. The transition from bodily worlds to mind – virtual worlds is going to happen whether we want it to or not, “it had to end and it did”. This is a fantastic work, never mind that as an installation it sits alongside several surreal sculptures of animals devouring other animals. The call to experience the potential of the digital image, its power to seduce and evoke, whilst reminding us of the ugliness, the Frankensteinian layers underneath, the real brutal world, which is still yet a digital construct, shows us both the power of our subconscious minds and the ever evolving power and finesse of virtual and digital technologies. This work is pointing to a future in the making.

Andrea Tarkovsky – Of Hunters and Astronauts, Video

This work is made up of edits from Tarkovsky’s film Solaris and brings together the professions of ‘hunters’ as rendered in a painting by Brughel, called Hunters in the Snow (1565) and the astronauts and scientists as representation of progress. Here the historical and the futuristic merge together in a scene where the psychologist Kris Kelvin encounters the phenomenon of his dead wife, gazing intently at a number of paintings by Brueghel and one in particular. She is lost in the image, smoking and concentrating on the work as gravity is lost and objects float across the library space. Tradition and scientific phenomenon are encountered simultaneously. The couple embrace demonstrating an intense emotional connection. Gravity is restored, a container falls and breaks and the moment is metaphorically and literally shattered.

Jon Kessler– Various works including The World is Cuckoo (Clock) Slide Show, 2016, Slide projector, electronics at Löwenbräukunst and a proposal drawing for The World is Cuckoo (Clock), 2016 at Les Ambassadeurs watch shop, Zurich City Centre.

The works made by Kessler, bring together a variety of historical and contemporary technologies within its content and realisation. We move from a slide projection of images which reference birds, found images including cartoon birds, Birds the Hitchcock movie, the American Eagle, flying winged structures with which to help man fly, mechanical birds, taxidermy birds, to videos of drones in bird form and watch mechanisms in the kinetic sculpture realised for Les Ambassadeurs, one of the most prestigious watch makers in Switzerland.  The World is Cuckoo (Clock), is sited on the lower floor and you can see the craftsmen at work whilst you engage with Kessler’s sculpture. The electronics of the work appear to be powered and animated by the magnified innards of a watch mechanism, but this is a symbolic gesture rather than actual. The device itself is attached to a wooden table and consists of a number of television monitors on which we see a digital image of a drone eagle against the back drop of a fiery sky. It could appear as a phoenix rising out of the burning ashes and it is in this, the lure of the idea of time and the sign of the world as cuckoo, that we witness a poignant and poetic gesture. Historical production and craft, fakery, technology, imagery, combine to create an event, a moment, a machine where all these elements can be found working together in a grand a-ha

Wezmke/Leinkauf – Symbolic Threats, 2015, Video, 17 mins.

The power of the artistic gesture and the subsequent media frenzy surrounding Symbolic Threats are at question in this work, which began with a daring removal of two American flags on Brooklyn Bridge, New York and the erection of white flags in their place. The video documents the history of Brooklyn Bridge (from 1883) through an assemblage of historical photographic and drawn images and then moves forward in time to the 22^nd July 2014, when the dawn broke to the arrival of two new unnerving symbols and a contemporary media response. The proximity of the bridge to the site of the former Twin Towers is not lost in the media coverage, captured and documented by the artists as part of this work. The intervention is covered by local and national media, the police, NY Mayoral office, through to the capturing of the opinions of the person on the street. The majority of the coverage locates the ‘act’ as a terrorism, a way of undermining the degree to which the authorities say that they are on top of security. Only one commentator actually questions the decision around the flags been white. Are they a symbol of an American surrender or is it being used to represent an opportunity, a ceasefire and parle.

Mark Leckey – Degradations, 2015, Digital Animation, Colour, 31mins 21sec looped

This work is presented on a monitor in the section, Art Without Artists and consists of a lone, six teat, pink and headless, lion-human hybrid. A rubbery pink sphinx of sorts. The object is made animate through actions which involve its repeated suspension in air, then perpetual banging on the ground, over and over, resulting in various action articulations of the thing. Then it throws itself against the screen, towards us, the viewer, again and again in an attempt to break through the glass of the monitor, in its attempts creating residual marks which make us aware of both the depth of space behind the screen and the screen itself. The actions whilst reiterating the flexibility, elasticity and plastic nature of the hybrid also emphasis the cruelty against, the power over the thing (by the creator) that is the animation and the desire of the artist-creator. Its success is that it evokes from the viewer an empathy for the ‘inanimate-animate’ with the simplest of narratives. It re-iterates the suggestible power of pink fluffy cute things, think Disney animation films etc. to evoke emotions whilst simultaneously deconstructing the power of the formal aspects of an animation character. Mark Leckey is represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Author: Mona Casey

The work was a space that had become a studio, a place to paint, a place to play the guitar and for sure a place to consume alcohol and even possibly live in. Its inhabitants were two males, one the artist, the other the artists model. They were engaged in the live act of art making and a particularly macho brand of studio living. I looked, took it in and left wondering if what I had witnessed was a relational work or a choreographed performance or some hybrid of these possibilities. Where did fiction begin and reality end? This work The End, is now presented as part of a retrospective of Ragnar Kjartansson’s work at the Barbican, though its realisation here, is to a certain extent as post-production. What we are given are the 144 pantings produced in Venice of the artists model, one of which was produced each day over the six month period that the Biennale ran. The salon hang of the paintings are less intriguing than the activity of their making, so whilst it completes the narrative for me, it may be less compelling for the new viewer.

More recently this year I experienced a showing of Me and My Mother (2015) as part of a group show called Illumination at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Here the audience was presented with the most recent of four video works where Kjartansson’s mother spits at him. The mothers persistence and disgust is equaled only by the passive endurance of the son, who benignly accepts the abuse. The work was presented here as a projection and almost at eye level, on a par with the staircase it it installed over.

The Barbican’s presentation of all four works, side by side on smaller monitors, gives us something else, a chronological evolution of a work which first started in 2000 then 2005, 2010 and finally 2015. The work operates as a portrait and record of the artist and his mother, getting older, but with a relationship that remains in the moments of this performance, consistent, throughout 20 years. The mother, Kjartsansson’s own and an actress in her own right, stands next to her son, acts and is convincing, whilst the son is well the son. The beauty of this work is the collision of the crafted acting and sincerity of the mother’s performance and the lesser-acted, more comedic resolution of the son. The actual mother and son bodies, performing mother and son, blur the distinction of what is real and what is fictional.

Two of the more substantial works in the Barbican show are a live performance and installation called Take Me Here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2011 – 14) and the beautiful multi-video installation The Visitors (2012). Take Me Here…consists of ten singing and guitar playing male troubadours, performing in a space that consists of domestic paraphernalia such as chairs, beds, beer bottles, fridge etc. against a backdrop of a large video screening of two flicking scenes of interior domestic spaces. In one we see a man and women, getting into a seduction and then sex scene on the floor. In the next we see the back of a women’s head sitting on a sofa, and then getting up with her dressing gown on. The two scenes show similar spaces but the emotional content is very different. They seem to question and query the success of 1950’s/ 1960’s models of the women as domestic goddess and home maker. All the while we hear the performers singing the lyrics ‘take me here by the dishwasher’, a romanticised group crooning and soundtracking of the found film footage. The actors in the movie are Kjartansson’s own parents, acting a love scene on the day that fiction became, later that day a reality, when the conception of Kjartansson himself is said to have occurred. The troubadours not only perform as accompaniment to the film, but also to us the viewers, as we are embraced and co-opted into the performance area.

The Visitors is an hour long, ten screen projection depicting nine scenes of the interior of a large, Victorian style house and one screen of the exterior, the balcony space outside the house. Each room is different and presents us with a space ready for the making of music. In one scene we see a roll-top bath filled with water and a speaker and microphone, in another a set of drums in a kitchen, in another a grand piano in a living room area and so on. Alongside these the one anomalous depiction of a group of people lounging and waiting on an outdoor balcony area. The interior spaces to begin with are devoid of human presence and have a stillness about them, that evoke a sense of anticipation in the audience. Then the first musician appears by the piano and subsequently each musician, one at a time arriving into their individual performance space, until the final countdown orchestrated by Kjartansson himself. They begin to play and continue to repeat the main lyrics over and over for nearly an hour. The isolation of each musician is off-set by the collaboratively delivered musical score, the group outside operating at times as choral support. I leave the piece, with the lyrics “once again I fall into, my feminine ways” and “there are stars exploding around you and there is nothing, nothing you can do” ringing in my ears, like ear worms. The projected screens have ‘tableau’ qualities which are intensified by the colour richness. The oft still-life nature of the images are reminiscent of stills and light boxes. The romance and poignancy of each of the singular performers being and activity is intensified within the group delivery and works so well here.

There are many other interesting works in this retrospective of Ragnar Kjartansson’s work such as God (2007), Guilt Trip (2007) and Scenes from Western Culture (2015), which wont fail to appeal. In each the staging and composition of the works for performance is so unerringly controlled, the photographic values reminiscent particularly of Jeff Wall and also Bill Viola. Whether working with cliches such as those of Western societal desires, human emotions such as sorrow and joy or the telling of autobiographical stories, there is an inherent showmanship, theatricality and tragic-comedic quality to the work which cannot be denied.

Author: Mona Casey

From here we enter Pitch Black, a smooth echo/ A scoop with a shelter, 2015, the biggest of the works within the show. Blue felt carpet curves in the space and under a wooden structure which balances on building blocks of concrete and wood, with white strip lighting arranged around the exterior. This is the stuff/ fabric of the blue-screen studio, re-imagined as artwork object. We are given a stage, with a perimeter, where we can edge against the gallery wall and exist off the space of performance but inevitably shift from observing to participants in the narrative of blue. The colour echoes a version of a cosmic world found in Renaissance religious paintings. The geometric elements are so cranky in their lack of perfection, but yet do the job of holding up the wooden structure, with its occasional fluorescent orange marks. Light emanates from underneath, creating another tone, within the landscape. The ambiguous structure has two sets of stairs leading into it, with strict instructions for two visitors maximum at any time. The interior of the structure is modest and has some basic architectural elements and a sound work. The sound is pieced together recordings of art making and narrated text of atmospheric moments; the former echoing Robert Morris’ work ‘Sound of its own making’, 1961, but here there is no poking fun at the mythology of artistic genius, this is a journey of remembrance, an act of documenting ‘making’ time. The entire work has an otherliness to it that is reminiscent of a space beyond our experience, a hut in the sky; but the poor recycled and domestic materials are known to us and interrupt our escape. We can see the staging, we can see beyond the blue hang to the gallery beyond, but the installations seduction draws us back down to this other world. The heavens should be upward, toward the roof of the building, but it is the other way around, the heavens, the sky, are on the ground.

The third space has a number of framed works, called Process Photograms, ♯1, 2, 3,4, 6, 10,13 &15, 2015. These are images created by Anne Hardy from the daily sweepings of the studio environment, using the debris and dust of the days creating, to make abstract images.

The final space and work Punctuated Remains, 2015, is a yellow room, carpeted from ceiling edge to floor and entry demands the removal of your shoes. This is a habitat for sculptural proposals, a place for material play; these echoes of Minimalism past, formal arrangement and drawing in space, lie within a visual field of colour. For a moment, intellectually I confront the possibility of being in a colour field or Miro painting with forms, objects, mappings, levitating in space, but gravity is too evident and the individual components, works, remain too dependent on wall and floor, to be convincing.

Overall this is a show of two halves. The first two works are theatrical, poetic and beautifully rendered. We engage with an idea of artistic creation and its potential affinity to a concept of Godly creation. From nothingness came everything, from the cosmos, to the sky, to human endeavor. There are some moments in the latter part of the show, which develop the formal play of the first, but the symbolism and composition is less assured.

This was an impressive presentation of the work of Anne Hardy and I await her next show with anticipation.

Author: Mona Casey