We Buy the Cosmos

On Wood St, unsupposing Wood St for a brief moment there exists a conjunction of two experiences of time, history and our place within it.

Both revolve around dumb objects. Objects in themselves arguably nothing more than the material which composes them. Nothing more than the whatever banding of atoms determines them to be.

Starting with a very earthly object, an LP, in particular The Beatles ‘The White Album’. Under the title ‘We Buy White Albums’  artist Rutherford Chang has been endeavouring to collect all numbered copies of The White Album. For Chang the famous white sleeve is a void which the concerns and personal history of whoever possessed it can expand into.

So you get exotic drawings, forgotten names neatly sitting in corners patiently waiting for identification and reunion. You also get a series of objects in various states of decay. Flick through the copies and each one is corrupted by its own existence. Each is its own maker within an individual journey in entropy.

Drifting through sleeve after sleeve, which can get repetitive, you do begin to think about the need for collecting. Is this need to collect some kind of attempt to keep entropy at bay? To halt or slow down the passage of time, by gathering object which hold residual histories.

Or is it simply something to do?    

                                                                                              

Objects with residual history also exist a little further down Wood St. Three meteorites’ sit patience on three brown modular plastic chairs. They can afford to be patient they’ve been around for a long time.

This is Beginnings by AKRA group part of Axolotl at Model. The aforementioned trio of space rocks and earth chairs sits in a group around a humming amp. Partly shielded by an old cinema screen, again objects imparted with historical residue.

The main focus is the meteorites; to experience Beginnings you select a meteorite don headphone and sinister black hood. Already under way is the narrative of the lump you hold in your hand. As the soft LIverpudlian accent intones this narrative, which for me starts somewhere out in space, heading towards, away from a familiar blue planet.

I begin to spin off connections, one of them being Charles and Ray Eames treatise on our place in the universe Powers of Ten. Of course all of this doesn’t matter to the space rock, it just is. All the poetry and astonishment comes from us, the humans. Due to our placement, out temporary placement, in the universe we create a sense of wonder; we attempt to come to terms with the incredible odds of our existence.

We do that do projecting some immense ideas onto the things that make up the world. Whether those object be record sleeves or things that fall from the sky. In pursuit to comprehend our place here and now.

  

Opposite Ends

Some while ago I went to see a few exhibitions in Manchester and this is, according to my notebook, what I thought.

First was the Clifford Owens exhibition at Cornerhouse ‘Better the Rebel You Know’ which to my knowledge is probably the first exhibition dedicated to a performance artist in the North-West. As I like that sort of thing I’m quite interested.

It doesn’t disappoint. It begins with a selection of photographs of an audience at one of Owen’s performances. Instantly I begin to see these images as evidence of the idea Barthes had about how when confronted with a camera, we perform. Follow this train of thought and you arrive at the question what is the difference between performer and audience.

As in this case the audience is asked to categorise itself, by race, by sexuality even personal experience. Here the boundaries about who the performer is get smeared. Within a system which Owen presents in this work is he uncovering some desire held within everyone to perform, to display some kind of characteristic that we can say is us?

There is a thread of this going upstairs. The other two floor of the gallery space features work which was created by Owens based on instructions from many members of the art world. The results are varied and interesting. Videos and photographs provide evidence of this undertaking. One piece features Owens randomly French kissing members of a gathered audience. Again making the audience a performative element. In turns the video is funny, exciting and uncomfortable definitely a boundary breaker.

I think my favourite piece is on the top floor. Here a white cube takes up the majority of the space, though it appears that part of this cube has been removed to allow access. Once inside you see a brown powder (coffee) gathering around the edges of the space. Something has happened here, and within me there sparks a myriad of imaginary motions and actions. It’s almost contradictory the absence of the performer allows the idea of the performer of his physicality.

To be aware of my body and the performers.

Better the Rebel you Know has been a totally satisfactory and completely engaging exhibition. I hope to get the chance to see Owens work again.

I also managed to see Ryan Gander’s exhibition ‘Make ever show as your last’. Which in short I didn’t like.

From the looking at empty boxes etched on Perspex the empty cartoon strips, the cloth shapes rendered in marble. I look at them and think it’s a whole lot of nothing, as if all this art has been reproduced, photocopied by a bored and inattentive intern. The whole thing feels as if someone has copied a Matthew Collings book on the YBA’s and hasn’t bothered to put in the feeling.

As I progress through the show I begin feel like I’m being teased and not in a playful way, just in an annoying way. For example when I move a curtain to relieve a wall, I’m not please that my expectations have been played with I’m just angry. It’s art I don’t trust, it feels insincere on the receiving end of a poor joke.

Though there are small points which might offer relief, which include sculptures based on descriptions of engine parts made by Ryan’s father and a mock sci-fi supercomputer. Unfortunately by that point I don’t really care.

I compare it to the Clifford Owens exhibition, which works in a very conceptual way but still invests his work with emotion along with a social and personal history, which makes his work human. While Gander’s work feels like an exercise in making something that looks like art.

Artist Statement generated via 500letters.org

C James Fagan

C James Fagan (°1975, Liverpool, United Kingdom) creates performances, drawings, performances and media art. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, Fagan tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.

His performances directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, he uses a visual vocabulary that addresses many different social and political issues. The work incorporates time as well as space – a fictional and experiential universe that only emerges bit by bit.

His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. With a conceptual approach, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.

His works bear strong political references. The possibility or the dream of the annulment of a (historically or socially) fixed identity is a constant focal point.