A History of Irritated Material at Raven Row

A History of Irritated Material is an exhibition that highlights art's relationship with politics and the archive over the past few decades.  Including projects by Group Material, Lygia Clark and Suely Rolnik, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, Ad Reinhart and a numbers of others, it features more than enough material to keep visitors busy for a good while.

The works or projects reference political conflicts since WWII; examining how the artist's response produces "irritable" forms of critique that situate the work between an aesthetic of cultural resistance and a criticism of its own status as an art object.

The curator Lars Bang Larson contemporizes the artists' work in the context of art and culture's present habitation of the individualist experience drawn from a "globalised world".  In reading Larson's response (in his introductory essay to the exhibition's accompanying document) I began to consider the work I had seen in relation to an aspect of my own practice which is concerned with art's scepticism of the political.

It is important to acknowledge the ruptures that political art practice instigates in terms of aestheticising forms of socio-political criticism.  But in the interest of moving forward and actively re-engaging with contemporary politics, it is important that art does not function as a mirror for the political situation, or even as a critique of conflict.  It must be its own conflict and its own critique in order to be able to respond to politics not through scepticism, but through engagement.

There is a breadth of work in this show that illustrates and plays with frictious social and political ideologies.  None more so than Disobedience, An Ongoing Video Archive which is an optimally installed video compilation featuring Bernadette Corporation, Harun Farocki, Etcetera and Critical Art Ensemble among others.  The design (by Xabier Salaberria) of the construction is both barrier and an aid in viewing the many works on show but I found it particularly distracting, especially in deciding what to watch.  However, there is a consistent conversation here concerning "the political subject as the media object", offering numerous examples of cultural resistance and dissent in the production of video art as well as political activism.

The exhibition well deserves the time needed to soak in the material on view (particularly Lygia Clark, From Object to Event, produced by Suely Rolnik) and I recommend reading the show's accompanying document which sheds some light on the choices made in curating this exhibition, as might the event Guy Brett and Lars Bang Larson in conversation, 7pm on 31st March 2010 at Raven Row.

A History of Irritated Material is on at Raven Row until 2nd May 2010.

Miroslaw Balka

Video Link:

Tate Channel: The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka

In this video Miroslaw Balka discusses his life in Poland, where he still lives and works, using his family home as a studio. Describing the house "like a frozen situation", he talks about his family history and how his sculptures grew from the materials he was surrounded by as a child.

Balka's relationship to materials is an emotional one. Conscious of the material's history and it's "own life"; he speaks of objects that exist as sculptures and objects that have a been used in a practical way with the same sensitive consideration, attentive to the material's origin and history. Guiding us round the house, Balka picks out traces of the past that have been physically imprinted on the house and it's objects; his grandmother's broom, the worn spot in the linoleum where she knelt to pray.

Balka takes us through a jewish ghetto of WWII and then to the train station from where jews were taken to the death camp of Treblinka. He talks movingly about the memorial sculptures at the camp and the material relationship with memory that is so important in his work.

This short film gives a thoughtful insight into How it is, enabing us to consider the work in the context of his own experiences and the depth of history in which he has grown up.

"Things in art don't happen so directly, they are much more mysterious. The change of ideas takes place on the levels that we don't see with the naked eye... in the underground." -Miroslaw Balka.

The Unilever Series: Miroslawe Balka How it is is at Tate Modern in Turbine Hall until 5th April 2010.

Florian Hecker at Chisenhale Gallery

The next week or so is the last chance to see Florian Hecker's electro-accoustic installation at the Chisenhale Gallery in East London.  The exhibition is made up of a set of works that use a sequence of tones to create an orchestrated mass of varying aural experiences that alter as you move around the open space.

With only yourself and the speakers occupying the vast gallery, the sound creates a bodily experience in which you are lead around by your ears and the sensation of comprehending a set of mixed aural signals which become almost overwhelming.  The monophonic tones suggest you are hearing one sound when up close to the speaker and something different as you move away as the tones merge into a near symphonic vibration.

At a talk given by Hecker's philosophical collaborator Robin Mackay, What is an (auditory) object?, the sound was discussed in relation to perception-as-hallucination and in comparison to theories of the eye-brain, in terms of painting.  But I was particularly interested in his interpretation of sound as not just performative, but dramatised.  This has me thinking about the sensation of hearing perception as something as much dramatised by the act of perception as by the performance of sound.

Florian Hecker's exhibition is on at the Chisenhale until 28th March 2010.

Richard Wilson, 20:50

January saw the re-installation of Richard Wilson's 20:50 at the Saatchi Gallery, King's Road.  First installed at Matt's Gallery in 1987, then at Boundary Road and later at County Hall, it has become an integral feature of Saatchi's collection since 1991.

My first viewing of this work was at County Hall where the wooden panelling and cornicing were perfectly reflected in the mirror of crude oil, in which you're given the impression of standing waist deep, the room strangely quiet and heady with the fumes from the oil.

The success of 20:50 to me lies in the sensory impression it creates; one that has stayed with me since I first saw the work over seven years ago.  So in going to revisit it at its new home at the Duke of York's HQ I had this sensory memory held in my mind and could smell the trace of warm oil as I stepped through the front doors.

Approaching the installation from above immediately draws attention to the illusion created by the reflective oil as a false floor, as it is set in below the level of the ground in Gallery 13 on the lower ground floor.  The entry to the walkway was blocked off and I was told by the attendant that visitors could not gain access.  Although the illusion looks as great as ever, somewhere between seeing it on approach and being denied access, I missed the work.

Works like this one (if there are works like this) not only deserve but require experiencial immersion.  Queueing up for half an hour at County Hall was more than worth the minute spent alone in an experience that has locked in my mind.  So I feel it is a great shame to deny visitors the real and intended vision that 20:50 creates, excluding us from a chance to wave our hand over the black sump pool and watch for ripples in the glassy surface.  Perhaps Richard Wilson doesn't mind so much, perhaps other people won't mind so much.  But I will do my best to forget this visit completely, if I can help it at all.