Modern Art Isn’t Rubbish And I Can Prove It: Liverpool Art Prize 2013
1) THE SPACE IS SPARSE yet
decorative, cold yet inviting, post modern and archaic allowing historical advancements
in art to take place while hollering back to a continuously reinvented past.
Four
artists. Four works of art. Like the directive children’s novels of the
eighties, you choose your own adventure- in which order shall I VISIT the work,
as I am not going to LIVE with these ideas but merely ‘touch base’ with them;
to see Modern Art (M.A.) of the moment and
then move on (well that’s the plan anyway). Physical minimalism sits beside
aesthetic complexity allowing each piece to change its context as they are all showcased
together. But we must judge them on their own merits and allow them to
communicate singularly and alone. Alone. Alone. Always alone.
Now
in its fourth year the Liverpool Art Prize sits lazily upon the Liverpool
Docks, lazily because like Mohammed to the mountain, the flock to the shepherd,
the students to the teacher, we must travel to the gallery, an activity unheard
of in a forever connected yet continuously hermetic interweb wide world; it’s a
global village but someone forgot to tell the art world. You can download a
novel to read on the bus in bite sized chunks or stream the latest movies to
your i-KindleBerry, everything coming at you as quick as the thought you had
about it. Everything except art. Well, love and art. And to have a love for art you have to have
patience to be rewarded. In the Grand Hall (not very big and like no Hall I’ve
ever seen) next to a cafe called ‘What’s Cooking?’ (again, post modern irony or
do they really not know?) the exhibit awaits....
At first we enter,
Laurence Payot’s piece literally looms large. A billboard of public
spontaneity, we see her working with the process of (re)capturing the moment,
(re)creating the everyday; like an unseen deity wielding the power of a well
organised puppet master- but surely this must be real, as there are too many unaware
pawns to be moved around on this public chess board? As we look closer at the
image- and this is why it is magnified so- we see every ‘performer’ has found a
place and are ‘acting’ accordingly.
But of course this is simply everyday life
writ large and any intent by the seen is from the subconscious mind of the
seer. The macro is reflected back into to a microcosm of bustling life but
Payot’s eye wants you to see so much more. Payot is known for her interactions
and interventions in public spaces (recalling the Situationist Movement of
fifties France) and as it is the people as the medium this piece shows even the
most subtle or nuanced interaction i.e. observation, can function as a catalyst
that sets of events that would not have happened otherwise (for example the
fact this moment can be kept for posterity is only because it was captured, if
it hadn’t it would be gone forever.)
Because
(the) exhibition(s) is (are) transient and there is nothing more than needs to
be said than what the artists need to say, the echoing hall instils confidence
as the undressy minimalist decor does nothing other than enhance the pieces and
lets them speak for themselves. The make shift and finite nature of the
exhibition is for all to see as, when Sunday comes, nothing will be removed
except for four works of art.
The
interest in exhibited art- as opposed to bought, seen in magazines/ on
websites, relayed in conversation-is about the experiential drowning out the
experimental. Others thoughts hum too loudly from their heads and opinions come
brusquely of their tongues, art is not about others but about YOU. And maybe
that’s too much for some to handle.
Visiting
an exhibition for the first time reminds me why I love art; regardless of what
the quality will be, I don’t know what to expect. And when I say I love art I
mean I am devoted to it, like a martyr to a religious movement or a zealot to a
politics. Why? Because Art is about living and it is all we have.
2)
POST MODERNISM (PO- MO) SEEMS TO BE ABOUT LOSING THE COMPLEXITY OF MODERNISM and
being honest about what is being represented. Maybe that ladder is just a ladder?
It is a symbol of going nowhere, of sadness,
sadness as it leans against a (one of the four) wall(s) with a roof above; therefore
to climb it is to go nowhere, which is ironically as far from the modern
artist’s mind as possible. For M.A. artists living in a post Po-Mo world art is
about selling and the currency of art and as an investment and a talking point
for the living room and so on and so forth when it should be about aesthetics,
communication, perception, regression, progression, deception, life, love, sex
and death. Well, basically, it should be about art. They have become business
people, craftsmen and craftswomen, but almost never artists in the public’s
eyes. However I’m here searching for artists and I realise it’s up to me to
find them.
Kevin Hunt gives life
to the moribund. And you can’t say fairer than that. For human hands to bring
the dead back to life is to make us see an alternative to our own ‘way’ and how
we can make changes to what is and to what isn’t. Hunt’s art is about rubbish
but it doesn’t mean M.A. is rubbish. The ordinary has always laid outside the
realm of art (both literally and metaphorical; art wants to be special even
when it tries hard not to be) but here it screams to be heard and the act of
ordinariness puts itself forward as important.
His interest lies in an
invisible and arbitrarily drawn line between when an object stops being its
supposedly obvious projected self and becomes worthy art. Is it about how it is
placed, its direction and surroundings? How little sophistication can a
sculpture get away with before its stops being ‘important’? Is Hunt freeing up the objects’ to let them just
be or is he caging them in creativity because of context. As I move away from
Hunt’s Ladder I wonder how many of his own questions he has managed to answer.
Is
it not the observer who in disdain to the observed automatically bypasses complexity
and meaning with reactionary disgust? ‘Do not patronise me, do not preach and
above all do not make me feel stupid’ and because they are made to feel
something less than the comfortable immediacy of understanding- in this a fast
track, fast food, T.V. on demand world- they refuse to participate in the
artists ‘game’ and try and give it a redundancy by (over) reacting with:
“modern art is rubbish” or “my five year old could do better” (I have noticed with
amusement it has suddenly become “my three year old could do better”-
they even want their possibly imaginary child in its hypothetical situation to be
skilled younger.)
3) M.A. SHOULD BE THE HEART BEAT PUMPING AN
EVER FLOWING SUPPLY OF ENERGY INTO POPULAR
CULTURE where all is (should be) new and challenging, but at times it can begin
to look like pop culture informs the art and when it has reacted against what
society has to offer- which is usually recycled from past generation because of
obsessive nostalgia - all M.A. can be is self reflective: the mirror in the
mirror; the depiction of an object within the same object; the design paradigm of the matryoshka principle in
action. It needs to forsake its principles for feelings.
Juliann O’Malley’s
inspection of people is for their own good and we look like we are in safe
hands. Using her own body as a tool to elaborate on this idea and record
events, her performance/ installation piece ‘Open Heart Surgery’ plays on the
juxtaposition of the use of the metaphorical heart and the literal. As we hear
a surgeon perform surgery we watch O’Malley lie bed bound, a bloody heart upon
her as kitchen knives swing above. A performance has never been so in the
moment, raw and contained; on headphones positioned around the darkened room twenty
women speak of the many ways you can have your heart broken. The circling
audience isn’t shocked but startled by the performance, what they are shocked
by is how much they enjoy the thrill of the details and how that challenges them.
They soon become introverted going back into the deep, dark recesses of the
mind to ask the question: when was the last time I had my heart broken? I am
still putting my answer(s) into a list later that night.
4) A THEMATIC LINE IS BEGINNING TO BE DRAWN through
all four works, pulled tight and tied up. It is more than I thought would
happen as the pieces of work surrender to each other and seem to become one
gestalt of modernity, proving that there is something new under the sun and that
it can burn brightly. The art pieces having a connection to each other in intent
and declaration is more important to me than I first realised, as a strange
feeling begins to wash over me. At first I don’t recognise what it is and then
realise: I am looking for a point and I may have found it.
To some textiles and
craft may seem uncomfortable bedfellows with ART (with a huge capital A) but
art is everywhere, in everything and is of everything; as well as the fine
stitches that holds it all together. Tabitha Moses has lovingly created
surrogate children to care for, turning the conceptual into the emotional.
There is not so much ideas and themes put forward here but stomach punches from
Moses’ diary of feelings: a lack of children of her own, toying with ideas of
IVF and adoption- children have forever been elusive to Moses but she has made
this into a call out, a shout out, a one sided dialogue telling us what she
wants and we have to listen. And there is no anger, self pity or regret as it
simple what she is doing, it is an idea as old as time from myth, fairy tale
and part of the very sustenance that keeps us moving forward; she is making a
wish.
In
my head the word ‘Care’ continues to repeat itself like the beat of a drum, and
it is a sound neither scary or annoying but soothing and it’s taking away any
anxiety I had about the state of M.A. Laurence Payot cares about the human race’s
future, Kevin Hunt cares for the soul and reputation of lost objects, Julianne O’Malley
cares about people’s feelings and Tabitha Moses cares for her hand made
children. The facetiousness and empty celebrity of Pop Art is gone, the
explicit shock tactics and anger of the YBA’s is behind us and instead Nu-Po-Mo
gives us art that we don’t just want to visit but we COULD live with, even
taking it around to see mother on Sunday for Lunch without any embarrassment. Care
is no longer a four letter word and neither is Art. And that’s why Modern Art
isn’t rubbish.
Epilogue-
RE: And the Winner Was...
On
the 30th of May Tabitha Moses was awarded the Liverpool Art Prize by
Metal Gallery (who run the awards). She also won the People’s Choice Award- so
a double victory- and she seemed more surprised than anyone else in the room. She
probably seemed so shocked because she didn’t realise sometimes you do get what
you wish for. And I for one couldn’t be happier.
If you are one of the
people who do care about Modern Art then visit the exhibition before it finishes
on the 8th of June.
Written by Martin
Shepley.
