Modern Sporting Exercises

Time to give the plates a bit of a break, so go to Oxford Circus and take a short stroll to Eastcastle Street, where there’s a trio of little galleries all in a row that can be ticked off the list without having to do any additional tubing, bussing or walking. First off is Pilar Corrias which has darkened the gallery and laid a black carpet down as preparation for what seems a bit of a mini art film fest. A string of videos from an assortment of artists is playing over the next couple of weeks and I guess it’s a sort of lucky dip as to what style of cinematic production will be playing at any one time or day. When I poked my nose in it was Ulla Von Brandenburg’s Shadowplay on the screen, in which a trio of silhouetted actors control smaller, puppet versions of themselves engaged in some kind of confrontation or duel or something like that. The dialogue is all in German which, I suppose, is fair enough coming from an artist with such an emblematic name, but perhaps adds an unnecessary layer of mystery on top of the already mysterious playlet that is being so seriously enacted. I confess, I didn’t really have a clue as to what I was watching and only lasted about five of the ten minute running time. As for the rest of the artists showing their works on the other days of the exhibition, I’m not familiar with any of the names but if titles are anything to go by then Mary Reid Kelley’s Thong of Dionysus or Tala Madani’s Eye Stabber perhaps promise a little more visual excitement than Ken Okiishi’s The Deleted Scene or Shahzia Sikander’s The Last Post, although maybe I’m being a bit too simplistic trying to judge artistic books by their sometimes less than artistic covers.

I confess, I’ve never really been much of a fan of art films although, when I was younger, I was definitely something of an art house film buff, happy to sit through hour after hour of Godard’s Maoist polemics or Bergman’s grindingly slow, angst-ridden tales of Swedish family trials and melodramas. I suppose things were different back in those days when all I had to do was wait for my next giro cheque to fall through the letterbox and it seemed there was an endless chronological vista ahead of me. Nowadays, when the path untrod looks a bit on the shorter side, I like to take my thrills thick and fast and prefer the pointless car chases and unnecessary explosions used to pad out the meaningless plots that most Hollywood blockbuster can be relied upon to provide. Having said all that, hats off to Pilar Corrias for giving these nine artists a platform to show their stuff. Let’s hope they find a more appreciative audience than the grumpy old man sat at the back of the stalls muttering to himself while he munches his way through a tub of popcorn during the Odeon’s reduced price Monday matinee performances.

Leaving Pilar, my eye’s blink their way back into focus and then have to retune once again as next door Pi Artworks has apparently decided to emphasise the fact that they’re not showing any films by painting the gallery walls an extra shiny pristine white and then extending the lack of colour scheme onto the wooden floorboards. I kind of think that by now they may have realised that this was not such a good idea as it shows up the footprints of everyone who has visited in the past week, which maybe doesn’t look so good. Anyway, enough of the contrasting décor, what about the art? Well, here’s a very strange show that is so quaint in its naïve integrity that if it was at any other gallery I’d assume it was some kind of spoof or parody. On offer is an autobiographical series of simple, almost naïve, drawings, complete with written text, that relate the tale of Azade, the artist’s former gymnastics teacher, and his involvement with the development of modern sporting exercises in contemporary Turkey. According to the gallery leaflet the exhibition reveals, ‘…a refreshing tale of female bodily empowerment and opportunity’. It’s a statement that, like the exhibition itself, says more to a cynical metropolitan viewer about the state of cultural, and especially feminist politics, in some non-Western countries of the world than it does about the skill or vision of their creator, the artist Nancy Atakan.

The final gallery in this neighbourly triumvirate is Carroll/Fletcher where five young – well, comparatively speaking, they’re all in their mid-thirties – artists have come together to present a show entitled Neoliberal Lulz. I suppose I have a fair idea what neoliberal means but being an old – well comparatively speaking, I’m all in my early-sixties – hack, all I know about the lulz bit is that it’s some kind of neologistic internet slang. So, I go to the Google gurgle gargle font of all wisdom and find that it’s something to do with internet schadenfreude, although, with different websites offering different definitions, the whole thing seems a bit flexible.

As for the gallery handout, this proves to be one of those rarest of all texts, the short, well-written and informative essay that actually offers a useful introduction to the work on show. In precis, the artists have decided to interrogate and critique the activities of some of the less reputable players in the corporate world by adopting their own strategies and glossy stylings. And they generally do it rather well. Constant Dullaart’s promo for a hacking software company looks all too commercially viable while the slick video pitches of Jennifer Lyn Morone are similarly convincing, whether she’s marketing herself or her bizarre product lines in diamonds, fragrances or hormonal therapy. Femke Herregraven uses graphs, spreadsheets and other graphic tools to try to illustrate and draw attention to the potential nasties that can be unleashed by the misuse of high frequency trading, commodity speculation and other forms of dodgy market manipulation. And finally, Emilie Brout and Maxime Marion have gone as far as to incorporate themselves as Untitled SAS, a limited company whose sole raison d’etre is to exist as an intangible work of art. On display are all the rather more tangible bits of legalistic paperwork associated with the enterprise, most important of which is, of course, the share certificate. Apparently it’s meant to be possible to buy actual shares at the gallery, although when I enquire I’m met with a good deal of confusion about prices and minimum quantities available and I quickly give up on my attempt to become a fully-fledged capitalist.

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