The Museum of [ ] Objects at the Allotment project is now closed
The curators continue to amass the collection and explore their role as cultural anthropologists….
Phase 3 Group Show
Showcasing the work of Christophe Dillinger, Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert, Joanne Hummel-Newell, The Jackson Twins, David Cheeseman, Mel Brimfield, Martin Bardell and Matt Smith
photography: top Mona Casey, bottom Charlie Levine
Matt Smith
Hide and Seek
Found fabric, silk, 2011
History is not democratic. Some are remembered and others are forgotten. Overarching “truths” stand in for the complexity of real lives, erasing out many people’s memories and histories.
I am interested in the people in history’s margins. The histories that are slightly out of line provide great possibilities to re-read the past.
The gaps created by erasing these marginal histories enable a consistent, coherent narrative of the past to triumph. However, they leave shadows and they leave silences. The lives lived in these shadows are open to multiple readings. They can be somewhere for us to project desire or to claim kinship. The murkiness also allows for fears to grow, for these shadows to become monsters.
It may take longer and it may need more effort, but the silences can be heard. When they are, the past feels like a more inclusive place, somewhere for everyone, somewhere more truthful.
Martin Bardell
The Cubicle, 2009 c-print on aluminium
The relationship between the self and society forms my general area of interest and I am particularly keen to explore both evolving and declining aspects of social interaction. I am interested in pinpointing changes in our everyday social rituals as an attempt at charting seemingly swift societal change. In this sense I am drawn to notions of Zeitgeist, be they fading or emerging. Today’s shifting experiential boundaries abstract our use of urban and rural environments, and perhaps even our notion of geographical place. A form of collective consciousness becomes muddled amidst such transformations, and social codes of conduct become increasingly elusive.
Through my studio-based practice I aim to address the perceived authenticity or artificiality of our contemporary social reality. The visual language of theatricality provides a suitable theoretical space within which to explore the politics of social interaction. In this sense my recent works seek to document, however atypically, a cross-section of a shared social psychology.
Mel Brimfield
‘Whole Lotta Lead’, 2011
gouache on mountboard
The brute machismo evidenced by Richard Serra¹s early sculptural practice is typical of the period. Promotional materials and media reports emphasized the muscularity and epic scale of his work, and typically featured photographs of the ripplingly muscular young hotshot stripped to the waist, or in revealing spandex outfits, and always with his trademark welding mask and crucibles, as evidenced in this poster for his blockbuster Whole Lotta Lead exhibition.
The portrait featured is one of a series shot by Hans Namuth of the artist at work on his ‘Throwing Lead’ series in a studio at the Leo Castelli warehouse. Originally published as part of an eight-page spread in prominent sculpture journal Rolling Stone, under the headline ŒIs he the greatest living sculptor in the United States?, the photographs were a paean to both masculine animal magnetism, and the raw physicality and drama of the sculptor¹s art.
His magnificent torso is smeared with oil and soot, and glistens in the dim light of the foundry furnace against a backdrop of exposed brickwork and rusty steel he is barely aware of the rude interruption of Namuth¹s probing lens as his studded gauntlets firmly grip the handles of his twin crucible ladles, full to the brim with molten lead. In a flurry of impetuous speed, the artist furiously hurls lariats of the fluid metal at the wall, a blur of superhuman energy and cathartic outpouring, before withdrawing, spent and cooling, a burnt out crater between explosions.
The sculptor is represented as undertaking an epic struggle with the very materiality of the physical world. In his dynamic posturing, he is the picture of a Romantic genius possessed by demonic terribilita.
Joanne Hummel-Newell
Best in Show
found object and ephemera, 2012
Embalmed in what was once readily to hand, these elevated figurines are shrines to societies short-lived fancies and disposable items.
Collecting discarded objects and ephemera is an important part of my creative process. Touched by another’s hand, the objects transcend their material nature and a narrative appears.
I decorate and wrap the figurines like mummies and then place them on book pillars to elevate them.
Snippets of photographic imagery and text peep through the wrapping to suggest a life’s story to create a final display. An ornamental end to the books, magazines, catalogues and receipts which are quickly being replaced by the digital.
Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert
Genuine Artefacts, 2012
The 2 parts forming the display presented on the shelf to the left / right are, in terms of their existence as whole things, new. However the component objects from which they are assembled – postcards, frames, cigarette cards - were all produced in the early 1930’s.
The potential for the component objects to have been combined in this manner dates from their time of production; should this potential have been fulfilled at this point then the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ would have initially applied purely to the monuments featured on the postcards.
It is now 80 years since the component parts were manufactured and therefore the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ may be applied not only to the monuments on the postcards but also to the postcards and other components which make up the two parts of the display.
At some point in the future the term ‘Genuine Artefacts’ will begin to apply to the two parts of the display.
David Cheeseman
‘The changing room’
‘As if by magic the shopkeeper appeared’ is a familiar phrase to those of us that grew up watching T.V in the 1970’s. Mr. Benn has now left the building and all that remains is his crisp black bowler and shiny bright shoes, the discarded attire of an ordinary businessman or banker. This mysterious gateway that unlocks extraordinary adventures is a conduit for the other selves that find space in the alternate realities of a quantum multiverse.
This piece is a conflation of my research interests. The gadgets and gaffs of the magicians trade propose material possibilities that contemporary physicists seek to observe. A mirror the device that confirms and confounds the others subjectivities.
Dimensions variable.
Mirror, shoes, bowler hat, stress ball, crystal balls, magnet, radiant light film and leather.
The Jackson Twins
‘He had recognised how well the gentility had obscured the delirium (self portrait. 55)’
Our work pays particular focus to ‘The Twin’, what it is to be an identical being - to in essence, share an identity with you re double. We explore the worldwide fascination with twins: in terms of the pop culture fixation of the ‘evil-twin’, the depths of the twin in folklore (The Doppelganger) and the themes explored through psychology and psychoanalysis. We aim to take advantage of the visual power - the awkwardness, the lack of fit and belonging, the freakish feel – of the twin motif. Within the performance of our self-portraits we illustrate the relevance of such an evocative motif in the context of a culture still fixated on the individual.
Our series of work entitled ‘The Cataclysmic Accounts from the Binary Institute’, in which ‘He had recognised how well the gentility had obscured the delirium (self portrait. 55)’ is taken, presents the viewer with folklore-inspired narratives where we take on the roles of story-book archetypes. This exploration into the Doppelganger theme has been combined with psychological research, in particular studies into delusional misidentification syndromes and multiple personality disorders.
We conceive the characters for this work so that they fit the particular scenario we have in mind, yet still remain extensions of ourselves. The costumes and make up have become more important as we have progressed, as it allows us to fully immerse ourselves within the role, performing these new identities. We do however place a certain importance on the viewer constructing the narrative. We aim for the pieces to raise questions as to whether we are literally seeing a double or whether the twin becomes a metaphor for a singular identity split and battling itself, one fighting one’s own inner demons, or a visual play on ideas such as the ego versus the id, or the conscience versus the hedonistic.
Christophe Dillinger
Children must be supervised at all times
This sound installation is a reflection on information and the way it is distributed and consumed. The 10 minute soundtrack is a constant flow of commands, warnings and statements that one is confronted to every day. These phrases are sclerosed: they were born complete one day and never evolved. Because of their very ubiquity and because they have been ceaselessly repeated to us, they have become set pieces of information that are now devoid of meaning and strength. They are like stamps on a passport: they don’t say anything about the country you’re going to, they simply state that all necessary administrative task needed to go there have been completed.
The soundtrack is accompanied by a printed sheet containing all the phrases and words used, printed as one big, continuous, punctuation-free block of text (the spoken phrases do not contain punctuation either). I encourage visitors to grab a sheet and read it. Hopefully, they will try and find the place in the text that is matching the spoken words, and therefore pay proper attention to the information delivered to them. My aim is to create a kind of game in which the visitor interacts passively with the artwork. The fact that the sheet can be folded and taken home, and that the sound files are available on line, is an incentive to carry on playing outside the gallery environment.
Christophe Dillinger, August 2011
The work is available to download at http://www.cdillinger.co.uk/sculptures-installations-relational-aesthetics-pieces/sound-installations/
