Jennet Thomas, All Suffering SOON TO END!

Comprising of a film and neighbouring installation, Jennet Thomas' solo show at Matt's Gallery presents a paradoxical meeting of the rambling rhetoric of a purple-skinned, evangelical preacher on the doorstep of the suburban home of a pensioner couple.  Inspired by a Jehovah's witnesses pamphlet (of the same name), the film is a portrait of British suburbia punctured by the arrival of the Alice-in-Wonderland-like characters to deliver the utopian dream of a world without suffering.

In an effort to convert the husband and wife, the narrative unravels repetitiously, with the preacher (and his sidekick, the green nun) using a healthy dose of dance music to pound out the promise All suffering SOON TO END!  A trip to a theme park of miniatures and a grow-your-own Adam and Eve add another level of absurdity to a work which does all but sermonise "the circus has come to town".

The tree of knowledge from the film is featured in the installation, from which emanates a voice speaking the original text which inspired the work and a projection of the hypnotic test card from the couple's television screen.  If you're really lucky, you might just meet a preacher or nun whilst you're there, now rendered mute as if a moving costume or life-size doll.

Allowing time to consider the work has lead me to appreciate its density of themes and questions regarding the cultism of conventional and unconventional modes of living and the lingering hopes of idealism in a capitalist system.  But this came to me after the circus had left, or rather, I had left the circus and was able to make sense of an otherwise sensational portrait of absurdity.

All suffering SOON TO END! is on at Matt's Gallery until 6th June 2010.

What will the next revolution look like?

What will the next revolution look like? is a performance by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler which charts the conception of The Museum of Non Participation through video, film, slides and narration.  Situated at Waterside Project Space as part of the current exhibition All that remains... the Teenagers of Socialism, two narrators (Karen Mirza and Nabil Ahmed) navigate the space and the spectators using text and image to recount the projects journey since its inception in 2007.

Whilst on a visit to Islamabad, Mirza and Butler witnessed a violence clash between plain clothes police officers and suited lawyers who were protesting outside the supreme court, from the window of the National Gallery.  Caught between the images of the gallery inside and the images of real violence occurring outside, as witnesses, Mirza and Butler became participants in an important event.

This raises the question; What position do you take?  Do you go outside and intervene, or do you remain a spectator?  What would you do?  As both artists and citizens Mirza and Butler have considered their positions and perspectives in whether or not one chooses to participate.  These questions sparked an investigation into ways of processing the complexities of social and political experience in Pakistan.

Interestingly The Museum of Participation in Urdu translates as The House of the Unexpected,  and indeed that might have been a suitable alternative title for this performance.  The narratives covered not only what had been witnessed and experienced in Islamabad and Karachi, but also posed questions about how resistance is represented.  The Museum of Non Participation focuses on cross-cultural exchange through language and knowledge, but also uses story telling as a method to find and ask the difficult questions about east/west relations, and the representations of those relations.

The most interesting parts of the performance were where the narratives took centre stage.  As they were conveying an important story and raising relevant contemporary issues about the politics of aesthetics, I felt that perhaps the format did not offer much more than a conventional lecture might have.  However, seeing it played out in the space meant watching others watching became part of the experience.  In creating a performance about political dialogic exchange I believe it becomes necessary to instigate a situation where that dialogue might be furthered, as the performance raised questions for me which my familiarity with this project have not been able to answer.

The creation of social spaces and opportunities for new dialogues are increasingly important in artistic practice and particularly where art and politics meet (The Museum of Non Participation's space behind a barbers shop on Bethnal Green Road last year provides an excellent example).  Just as we consider the same question as citizens, as artists we must decide whether or not it is necessary to participate and become involved in issues that affect the world beyond artistic practice.  As The Museum of Non Participation demonstrates, in participating in one system you choose not to participate in others, so the question for us all becomes not whether to participate... but, how?

All that remains... the Teenagers of Socialism exhibition continues at Waterside Project Space until 25th April 2010.

Mike Nelson to represent Britain in Venice

Twice Turner prize nominated artist Mike Nelson has been chosen to represent Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

One can only try to imagine what Nelson will conjure up to transform the British Pavilion, but Adrian Searle insists his work must "punch above its weight" if he is to compete with the installation big hitters of recent years such as Elmsgreen and Dragset (2009), Gregor Schneider (2001) and Christian Boltanski at this year's Monumenta.

Nelson's installations offer the possibility to be more than transported, to be transformed; locked in a performance which is encountered rather than conducted, sensational as well as sensory.

Richard Grayson, from his essay on The Deliverance and the Patience:

"We move through the wooden door into spaces that shift us between sweatshop and workshop, travel agents and gambling den, from rooms for pedagogy to rooms for pleasure.  Spaces where we can slip from one state and condition into another.  The immediately startling thing about this is that these spaces and architectures are unpeopled- we have entered some Marie Celeste, and we are perhaps the first person to step there since... well, whatever happened... and first off it is ourselves that we find being shaped and articulated by the spaces as we are cast in the role of part trespasser, part archaeologist and part detective: a person moving through the traces of other's existences trying to understand what catastrophe may have caused this emptiness and what condition may have shaped the inhabitants lives."

Nelson has the opportunity to create something quite incredible, I'll follow Searle in saying "I really hope Nelson does something extreme, and manages to excel himself.  I really hope he fucks with the pavilion, and with our heads."

Pictured:  Mike Nelson Preface to the 2004 edition (Triple Bluff Canyon) (2004) showing as part of Crash at the Gagosian Gallery (2010)

No Soul For Sale

Tate Modern is celebrating its 10th birthday with a weekend-long eclectic festival in the shape of No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents, which will take place in Turbine Hall mid-May.  Originally devised by X Initiative, the event had its first airing in June last year at the former Dia Art Foundation headquarters in New York, with 40 independent international arts collectives and not-for-profit organisations taking part.

Inspired by Lars von Trier's Dogville, the event will focus on creating a collaborative, communal, anti-commercial art fair atmosphere where performance, film, music, installation and who knows what else can be watched and talked about, with Tate Modern staying open until midnight on Friday and Saturday to accommodate all the activities.

Visitors at NY's No Soul For Sale opening night will have seen Mexican City-based artist Martin Soto Climent construct a beer can sculpture Impulsive Chorus (pictured above) from 1000 beer cans, kildly emptied and donated by the public throughout the night.

More than 50 organisations/collectives have been invited to take part, including White Columns (New York), Kling and Bang Gallery (Reykjavik), Y3K (Melbourne) and e-flux (Berlin), as well as London-based organisations like Museum of Everything, Auto Italia and no.w.here.

Also, if you visit the gallery on May 12th you may see several hundred cake-carrying school children mildly fatigued from a walk from Borough Market to Tate Modern in honour of its birthday.  So grab yourself some cake and a birthday sing-song if you have the chance.

Curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Cecilia Alemani, Massimiliano Gioni and Tate Modern, No Soul For Sale is on at Turbine Hall, Tate Modern from 14th-16th May 2010.