ARTISTS' WORK IS PERFECTLY PLACED AT THE SOUTH LONDON GALLERY
By Camelia Gupta
20/08/2004
The Source of Life is in the Art of the People (detail), 2004. Table. Goshka Macgua.
Camelia Gupta finds herself perfectly placed to dissect the latest offering from the re-opened South London Gallery.
In Perfectly Placed, at the South London Gallery until August 29, five artists were specially commissioned to make work inspired by South London.
Building on the gallery’s long tradition of involving itself in its neighbourhood, Perfectly Placed aims at a 'laboratory' feel.
Entering the gallery, I’m drawn to a squat structure that resembles a large cardboard box, covered with announcements about security and terrorism. It’s part of Paula Roush’s installation, Aesthetics of Emergency (Art and Security).
We’re invited to sit inside and select DVDs from a series with titles like Growth and Control. It’s a claustrophobic space. Putting the headphones on, it's hard to remember where I am.
The films intercut museum security officers talking about their procedures and reflecting on the post 9/11 situation; the artist, dressed in army fatigues, crawling across a debris-laden landscape and most disturbingly a montage of young girls reciting emergency evacuation procedures.
Text, images, sounds, languages meld into a bewildering blur. It now feels like a cross between a Wendy house and a bunker.
Exiting rather hurriedly, I’m confronted by a notice board. Pinned to it are floor plans and newspaper headlines detailing "counter-terror plots" and the whole thing has the feel of an Intelligence Agency (or terrorist group?).
Roush creates a tense experience of surveillance and knowledge-as-power.
Goshka Macuga offers a sharp contrast to the bunker aesthetic with a beautiful, apparently antique, wooden dining table.
Set into the surface is the legend "The Source of Art is in the Life of a People". We’re informed that what we’re looking at is a replica of the original floor of the South London Gallery; concealed for the past 100 years by the one we’re standing on.
Designed by illustrator and social reformer Walter Crane to be both functional and inspirational, here it is recuperated for 21st century visitors with an invitation for the other artists to use it as display space. An invitation which, interestingly, hasn’t been taken up when I visit.
The floor also inspires Cornford and Cross. A piece of paper is mounted to the wall. It details how they’ve replaced one of the grilles in the floor of the gallery. The one you may, as I did, have just walked over.
This simple act sets up a number of connections between the gallery and the wider world.
The original grille is to tour as part of Perfectly Placed’s community programme, and will eventually become part of the gallery’s permanent collection. The replacement, whose complex production process is detailed, is not the result of a “a simulated re-enactment […] nor is it a replica. It is neither better nor worse than the old grille”. The investment of time, money, creativity, materials and skill is invisible, but exists in the psychological and perceptual relationships that the work creates.
Janette Parris’s contribution is Throw In The Towel, a comic strip detailing the pressures and rules of life in the gym. Contextually, her depiction of hapless inductees, a workforce under economic pressure and the offering of the gym as a 'one size fits all' solution functions as an ironic rewriting and enacting of the Victorian conception of art’s emancipatory potential.
The colours and line style are harsh, blank, alienating and evocative of airline emergency cards. Expressions are wooden, smiles more like grimaces.
Colin, desperate to save his job and under observation by his co-workers in an atmosphere reminiscent of Orwell, finds his charges’ psychological weak points and exploits them to best advantage.
In Settlement Adam Chodzko organised the purchase of a square foot of land in the borough and gave it as a gift to a stranger. We experience the land through a collage of recordings following as the light and ambient sounds change over time.
Chodzko selected Mr Singh partly based on his status as an immigrant/seeker of British citizenship. Through this simple idea, Chodzko is able to explore and perform the identity of person and place and how they inform each other.
Chodzko’s beneficiary wrestles with the legalese detailing what he can 'do' with his property. The language exercises power and when he manages to hack his way through it, he discovers that he can in fact 'do' very little with 'his' land.
Perfectly Placed aims to foster dialogue about contemporary art and its cultural relevance. To this end, the gallery is home to an ongoing programme of workshops for local groups.
Settlement, 2004. Video with sound, 34cm x 23cm of land, and legal contract. Screenshot. Adam Chodzko. Settlement, 2004. Video with sound, 34cm x 23cm of land, and legal contract. Adam Chodzko.
When I visited, a local youth group were working on 'mapping place', using various pieces of equipment to record what these terms mean to them. Their works are then displayed, extending the exhibition into an ongoing process.
There was a lot of noise, action and bustle, unusual and interesting in the gallery environment and bringing South London into the gallery in a welcome and novel fashion. These aren’t supporting events; they’re an integral part of Perfectly Placed.
Relationships between the pieces are clear. Grids recur, with Chodzko’s use of a plot of land, Cornford and Cross' grille and Paula Roush’s security blueprints.
The interrelation between knowledge, language and power is key. Roush awards herself a PhD, in satirical homage to the gallery's origins as a working men’s college, and investigates 'expert' status. Chodzko sharply points up the difference between ownership and agency.
Much of the work asks questions about what we are allowed to know and what is known about us - concerns central to our post 9/11 world and to a country whose government is keen to bring in identity cards.
The works begin from very specific South London locations, but spreads beyond this to use the area as a field from which to examine ambitious concerns. The city as a whole reaches out into the world.
Questions of place and identity that we can all connect to are asked here. What is it to have a home(land)? What do we get and give to this process?
Perfectly Placed is a fascinating show, mixing highly conceptual work with community activities and participation. Check it out.
Emergency Fairy Tale: Evacuation of the Art Collection Explained to Proletariat Children, London 2004, chapter 07 from the graduation thesis Aesthetics of Emergency (Art & Security). Screenshots from video transferred to DVD (interactive installation).
