Lisa Beauchamp goes to Castlefield Gallery for the first solo show of Riccardo Iacono.
The first UK solo show of Riccardo Iacono, The No Show is the latest exhibition at Castlefield Gallery.
Running until May 27 2007, the exhibition is the result of a series of research visits to the gallery by the artist over the past six months during exhibition changeovers. It investigates the processes that take place when the gallery is closed to the public.
According to Iacono the aim of the exhibition is to reveal the ‘unseen’ and ‘behind the scenes’ side of the gallery and on entering the exhibition viewers are presented with a gallery in a state of flux.
The gallery space is dimly lit and consists of sheets of MDF stacked up against walls, grey paint marking the edges of the walls, tools and brushes scattered around and chairs balanced haphazardly on the floor. In short the room is filled with objects that might be normally used in a gallery when taking down and putting up exhibitions.
The random contents of the exhibition are there to give the appearance of a gallery unfinished and in process, before the walls have been painted, the work hung and the space tidied.
According to Iacono, “I will curate the unseen; not what you see, but what you don’t see. I will collapse space and time and create a performance installation.”
Viewers might be baffled as to what Iacono means by “collapsing space and time”, which seems perhaps more appropriate for an episode of Dr Who than for a contemporary art show.
The resulting exhibition features video monitors showing documentary footage of past exhibition changeovers. Becoming a focal point of the exhibition these serve to disturb the viewer through their frantic flashing of indecipherable images and loud noises.
Oddly positioned around the gallery this film footage shows the artist throwing objects such as linen sheeting, wood and rubbish around as a means of exploring the relationship between his body and the surrounding environment.
Unfortunately The No Show is only partially successful - in the way that it makes the viewers participants in this process of change - merely by their presence in the gallery. Elsewhere Iacono’s desire to create what he terms the ‘unseen’ appears overdone.
Instead of walking into a space of change and excitement we are presented with a series of objects in disarray and video footage that seems to confuse the scene. For me this lack of cohesion left me feeling disappointed with the artist’s interpretation of the ‘unseen’.
However, The No Show is an ambitious attempt at revealing something that is conventionally hidden from public view and it does make you think about issues of control, access and change. For this alone, it is worth a visit.
