It has recently occurred to me that the unconventional
and the bizarre are in fact common interests of Liverpool’s current wealth of
exhibitions. Whilst Glam! The
performance of Style at Tate, focuses on the garish pop
culture of the seventies, Mark Leckey’s The Universal
Addressability of Dumb Things at the Bluecoat,
boldly celebrates the absurd and the whimsical. The past few weeks have brought
about a notable amount of unorthodox art happenings - everything
from an large, projection of Mark Bolan’s face in the Albert Dock, to an
enormous, inflatable cat arriving at the Bluecoat. Likewise, it is also worth
mentioning the lurid dress made entirely of hair that has recently appeared in
the Walker. I have somewhat endorsed in this apparent trend of jovial, light-hearted
art currently taking over the local art scene and I find it rather refreshing
if anything, as one must admit, we can at times take art too seriously,
intellectualising it too much, or trying to advocate political or social change
through it. Sadly, this can often take the fun out of art and make
it significantly less accessible. On that note, I must say that I
attended Leckey’s exhibition with great enthusiasm.
The
Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, curated by Turner
prize-winning artist Mark Leckey, explores how our relationship with artworks
and commonplace objects is being transformed by the augmenting rise of new
technologies.
Upon initially
encountering the exhibition, if anything, I felt it recalled aspects of
Dadaism, and this sadly made me question its originality. Usually, I would not
be bothered by seeing something that had clearly been done before, but I as I
felt the exhibition was in some ways trying to pose as new and different it
bothered me slightly. The exhibition’s clear rejection of reason and logic, but
clear embracing of absurdity adhered closely to Dadaist ideologies.
Although I admit the fundamental concept of the exhibition was rather
unique and thought provoking, the notions, which were evoked by the artworks
and the displays, were seemingly unoriginal. As the exhibition was built on a
concept that was apparently unique I felt it had made a promise to its viewers
to give them something a bit more original than a revival of Dadaism.
Dwight
Mackintosh’s Untitled was one of
my favourite pieces of the exhibition. This was consequential to the fact
that it reminded me a lot of Jean Michel Basquiat of whom I happen to be a big
fan of. Its raw, expressionistic style and primitive looking figure made
me immediately think of Basquiat. Apparently, Mackintosh’s drawings
can be recognised by their ‘x-ray’ views of the human body, and this is really
evocative to consider, when one acknowledges the fact that Basquiat was also
inclined towards this in his own work, as he was a noted enthusiast of the
classic anatomical study Gray’s Anatomy.
The title of this piece also struck me as an uncanny reference to Basquiat, as
a great wealth of his work was ‘untitled’. Furthermore, when I had ascertained
that Mackintosh had spent fifty-five years in mental institutions the piece
seemed to develop more layers to it; the expressive, flowing lines seemed to
now have more meaning and emotion underneath them. It certainly is a
coincidence that Basquiat was also a tortured soul and he created work of a
similar style to Mackintosh. A few steps away from Dwight’s piece
was Transmission of a Blinderator by Joey the
Mechanical Boy. Its close proximity to Dwight’s piece was really
thought-provoking, as the artist of this painting was actually an autistic
child who believed that he could only function as a machine. It seemed an
excellent piece of curation had been implemented, as both artists had a mental
illness or disorder. Similarly, Dwight apparently had a fascination with
machinery, and there was evidence of this in Untitled; therefore, fascination
with machinery was yet another evident parallel.
There were lots of machine imagery pieces placed around this
area of the exhibition and most, if not all the artists were male. It was
therefore as though gender was being discussed on an underlying level. Machines
are thought of as stereotypically masculine objects, but our common inclination
to denote these sort of objects as intrinsically male is a mere societal
construction. It is as though the curation of the two aforementioned pieces was
trying to adhere to common societal beliefs regarding gender, and I did not
enjoy this. Even though I had appreciated the other links that had been made
between the two aforementioned artists’ I did not enjoy the formation of cliché
male imagery.
Gender discourse
through the means of curation seemed to continue in the nearby space, where
images of the female body were displayed in close proximity to one another.
John Tenniel’s Pygmalion and the statue,
a piece, which denotes the pure ideal of Victorian womanhood was placed right
next to Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton’s, Studies in
Perception, yet another image of the female nude. A
startling contrast between how women were represented in the exhibitionand how
the male identity was defined unsettled me. Women had been represented by nude
figures, merely as objects of the male gaze, were as machines –
objects that epitomise modernity and productivity, represented men.
Even though I thought it was just as demeaning for masculine stereotypes to be
played up to, it was the contrast between the male and female imagery that
bothered me the most, as it was extremely stereotypical. If new
technologies have in fact transformed our relationship with art and objects, like
this exhibition claims, then why does it recall stereotypical images of both
genders through art and objects that have existed long before the arrival
of technology? Personally, I feel it seems something of a contradiction.
Before attending the exhibition I had not expected to leave
thinking about gender representation. It seemed to me, that despite the vast
amount of unserious pieces of art on display, the curation still managed to put
me in a serious and critical mood. Nevertheless, this certainly did not deter me
from enjoying other aspects of the exhibition, as there was without doubt a
great deal of interesting pieces on display that were refreshing in all of
their light-heartedness and occasionally humorous nature.
