A constituent part of the Liverpool Biennial, the John
Moores Painting Prize is one of the UK's most prestigious art competitions.
Founded in 1957 by Sir John Moores, its fundamental aim since establishment has
been to bring to Liverpool the UK's best in contemporary painting.
I’d like
to teach the world to sing by artist Laura Keeble was without question
my personal highlight of the exhibition. The piece
practically epitomises the competition’s thematic embracing of
‘contemporary’; a compressed Coca-Cola can, which was discovered on a road in
Greenwich, subsequent to the August 2011 riots, becomes the canvas. This
innovative attribute of the piece makes it unequivocally clear that Keeble has
advocated an inspiring insight into the possibilities that contemporary
painting brings forth. The name of the
piece derives from the renowned 1971 Coca-Cola advertisement in which
a gathering of multi-cultural youths sing I’d like
to teach the world to sing in a collective call for harmony, equality
and all things as such. Thus within this piece Keeble discusses why this
so-called symbol of sociological idealism has now been discarded and trampled
on. Keeble’s main question, which she leaves the viewer to decide, is whether
the values that were symbolically assigned to the object are today ‘protected
or suppressed’. Onto the jagged
surface of the compressed-tin canvas Keeble has illustrated a congregation
of riot police crusading past a dramatic landscape of fire. The bumpy, uneven
surface in which the enamel painting lies over not only provides an effective
degree of depth and dimension, but also produces a raw, unrefined effect, which
makes it look reminiscent of primitive or tribal art. This could be viewed as a
reference to the supposed primitiveness of the violence and destruction
demonstrated within the 2011 riots. The distortion of the acting
canvas provides a conspicuously expressive nature to the piece, which in effect
allows the violent subject matter to be physically manifested.
When
contemplating the piece, unsurprisingly I began to draw in thoughts of Warhol’s
celebrated piece, Coca-Cola. His
representation of the brand indicated that it was a symbol of democratic
equality. This was consequential to the fact that as a commercial brand it
is available to both the richest and poorest consumers alike; similarly
speaking, all Cokes are the same and no amount of money can buy you a better
one. It seems that this optimistic Warholian concept has somehow been
discarded and trampled on quite literally within Keeble’s piece, as it
addresses an event when people supposedly acted on a sense that they did not
have democratic equality. Warhol’s representation of Coca-Cola was
illustrated with absolute precision; it therefore portrayed commercial
artificiality and the superficial notions that the American dream inspires,
which formed the basis to most of his work. On the other hand, Keeble’s piece
is, stylistically speaking, rough, raw and unrefined. It can therefore be seen
as a realistic response to the optimistic message of democratic equality
instilled into Warhol’s piece. The only apparent parallel that I would be
able to make between Keeble and Warhol’s pieces is that both, to some degree,
refer to consumerism. Whilst Warhol’s painting openly embraced the explosion of
American consumerism in 1950’s, Keeble’s work arguably depreciates it, as many
have claimed that consumerism was actually the genesis of the August 2011
riots. Therefore, a discreet parallel between the two works can be denoted,
regardless of the conspicuous difference existing between them in
atheistic.
All in all, I
believe Keeble’s encompassing of found art gives her piece a profound
power. As primary source material of the riots it provides its viewers
with a brutal sense of honesty and memory of the event. Nevertheless, arguably
the most impressive aspect of the piece is its capturing of dialect between the
artist and the public. Unknowingly the public has made its own expressive,
artistic footprint within the work and Keeble has ingeniously encapsulated it.
Henceforth, Keeble’s piece once again provides us with a compelling insight
into the potentials of contemporary painting, but this time were the boundaries
between the artist and the public are far from being anything but
obtrusive.
