REVIEWS

> EXHIBITIONS
Ken Gonzales Day Strung Up 2006

small bubbles appear on a number of objects: empty vodka bottles, a pipe, a squashed plastic cup, an outstretched hand. Jimmie Durham, master of the bitingly ironic, faux-Native American artefact, presents a totem-like sculpture, I Want 2 Bee Mice Elf, 1985-2006. The punning title poetically illustrates how an indigenous American’s claim to an authentic humanity is misinterpreted by ‘superior’, ‘civilized’ colonialists as the mysterious act of a noble savage at one with nature, like some supernatural earth spirit … and therefore dismissibly ‘other’. This element of magical realism is encouraged by the curators, who quote Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children, in their press release: ‘we simply could not think our way out of our pasts’, which suggests the limits of thought when confronted by the complexities of a postcolonial society. Similar limits can be encountered within this exhibition, but the willing viewer will find it to be an unusually rangy, contemplative project; a fact that leaves the show at the same mercies as the society it reflects, where limited empathy renders the entrenched issues these artists deal with seemingly irresolvable. ❚

■ Clegg & Guttman
Cornerhouse Manchester August 11 to September 24
Sometimes it seems like every gallery is turning into a library or a bookshop. If you’re not well read when you enter, don’t worry, you will be when you leave. Immersion in text provides its own sense of excitement, and collections of books have their own aesthetic, dedicated to systems of display and organisation. There are a lot of different types of shelving in Clegg & Guttmann’s show. An aspect of the bibliothetical transformation of museums and galleries is the increasing prevalence of exhibitions comprising documentation and the residue of art that has happened elsewhere, rather than self-contained art objects. This ‘elsewhere’ might be another museum or gallery. More likely it is a site defined to some degree by it not being a gallery. When placed in a gallery these artefacts undergo some presentational grooming to make them look more at home – that is, to look more like art. The Open Public Library, Graz, Recontextualised, 1990/1993/2005, began with three bookcases placed in selected locations in the suburbs of Graz, stuffed with books to be freely borrowed, and inviting additional donations from interested users. Contrary to pessimistic expectations, these small-scale unpoliced institutions thrived. Two years after the project ended the artists returned to conduct interviews with residents about their response. The bookcases and contents, videos of the

DAVID BARRETT

is an artist and a writer whose new book on Jake and Dinos Chapman will be published by Royal Jelly Factory in the autumn.

cafe gallery projects london

MICHAEL CROSS Bridge
20 September – 29 October 2006 Wednesday – Sunday 11 – 4

Curated by Andrée Cooke, Bridge is financially supported by Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation and Cafe Gallery Projects London

Dilston Grove

The monumental raw space for installation and experimental art. Southwest corner of Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA. Jubilee Line to Canada Water Tube/Bus station. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7237 1230

www.cafegalleryprojects.org

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EXHIBITIONS

> REVIEWS

interviews, maps and photos of locations, cardboard boxes with more books in, and gallery packing crates used to transport all this material form the recontextualisation at Cornerhouse. The result is designated a Community Portrait. Visitors are encouraged to read the display as in some way representative of the people of Graz. But it is hard for one without knowledge of the nuances of Austrian society or a more than basic grasp of the German language to glean much of an insight. The presentation is far more about the nature of institutions than the specifics of that location, and its reading is governed by the tension between the temporary institution that was the Graz library and the institution that is the art gallery. Two other library projects, from Duisberg and from the Freud Museum in Vienna, are also presented in ‘recontextualised’ form, and in each case what we encounter in the gallery is a fetishised version of a library that is not a library at all. In a conversation with Dave Beech at Cornerhouse, Clegg & Guttmann talked of the library as one of the institutions that define society; what is true of the library is true of other institutions. This conversation is available to watch online at www.cornerhouse.org, and took place in the structure built for the major new work in this show, Manchester 1911, 2006. In the autumn of 1908 Ludwig Wittgenstein became a student of aeronautics at Manchester University, after spending much of his 19th summer engaged in kite-flying experiments near Glossop. He stayed until 1911, when the presence of Bertrand Russell lured him to Cambridge where he devoted himself to philosophy in preference to designing flying machines. Manchester University was a hotspot for scientists during Wittgenstein’s sojourn – top of the luminary list being atom-splitter Ernest Rutherford. Clegg & Guttmann take this coincidence, and the possibility of cross-fertilisation it engendered, as a starting point for a work that draws in contemporary physicists, philosophers and artists, culminating in a public forum: ‘Activating the Social Sculpture’. The interdisciplinary and inter-institutional activity causes a disruption intended to allow some new thinking. With Beech the artists clarified that there is no binary position – inside or outside the institution of the art world. There is no value in artists pretending their work in the public sphere exists outwith the influence of institution. The relationship between institutions is the locus of their practice. The work initially made in Duisberg, The Seven Bridges of Königsberg, Recontextualised, 1999/2005, includes a system of library shelving that does not allow books to be arranged in alphabetical order – in the same way that in the 18th Century it was proven that it is impossible to cross all the bridges of Königsberg just once and return to your point of origin. The constant reordering of books allows for no settled position. In Clegg & Guttmann’s work the role of the institution of art defines itself through its relationship to all other institutions – its character being purposefully disruptive. And reciprocally, in order to engage, viewers and participants must define themselves (if only provisionally) in relation to the institution of art. ❚
MARTIN VINCENT is an artist.

Clegg & Guttmann Sha ‘At’ Nez or The Displacement Annex 2004

■ Uncertain States of America
Serpentine Gallery London September 9 to October 15
A foreign country is ‘crisscrossed’ over many months, hundreds of visits made, ‘dossiers’ gathered (2000 files) and ‘brought back to Europe for closer scrutiny’ – a ‘new generation’ is identified. Most of 30 or so artists whose works are crammed into the Serpentine Gallery, and a dozen others whose videos are displayed on monitors inside the adjacent pavilion (a structure which makes a departure lounge seem cosy) are not well known over here. But there is a feeling of familiarity about ‘American art in the 3rd Millennium’ (as the exhibition’s subtitle has it) and a nagging sense that a more undercover expedition and risky selection by the curators, bypassing the usual gallery networks, would have resulted in a more vital compass of our times. The wider context for the show is a political culture crystalised in the phrase ‘war on terror’, a climate where the idea of America is as likely as not to be seen in the pornographic images of torture which came out of Abu Ghraib, a brutal merger of power and aesthetics, images which were quickly appropriated to be re-presented in the form of large murals

cafe gallery projects london
Supported by New work selected from The Water People series: New photographs plus especially commissioned medals by Brynja Sverrisdottir

BRIAN GRIFFIN
Cafe Gallery

20 September – 29 October 2006 Wednesday – Sunday 11 – 4
South-East London’s foremost artist-led contemporary art gallery. Established 1984. Centre of Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA. Jubilee Line to Canada Water Tube/Bus station. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7237 1230

www.cafegalleryprojects.org

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