Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Lost Properties
Published by England & Co
Reviewed by: Lucy Wilson
The cover of Lost Properties shows items seized by Customs at Heathrow Airport – metal shelves holding objects made from animal skins, among them stuffed crocodiles and cowboy boots. The incongruity of these objects, like a collection of displaced bodies, juxtaposed with the airport storage room, can act as an introduction to the ideas in this book.
Inside, the main narrative is of a woman at a 'Festival of the Mind and Body'. We follow her as she goes on stage to try out meditation techniques whilst watched by an audience, her thoughts followed in single lines of text running underneath the images: "'they all seem strangely familiar. Like a school class reunion, she can just about recognise the children she'd known in the faces she now sees'".
Two events 'bookend' this sequence. One of these is a description of a yoga class being broken into and the possessions of the participants stolen, the crash of the break-in heard as the group is "picturing our breath moving through a glass tube", another intrusion into what was supposed to be a spiritual experience.
The book is printed in red which takes some time for the eyes to adjust to, and loses detail in the smaller images, although somehow it does create a distanced atmosphere. Some figures are double-sided cut-outs, their reverse placing them in different contexts. Whilst the reader's manipulation of them plays with the dynamics of the page, the smaller figures are fiddly. I am unsure whether this aspect of the book creates too many different details; however it does create a dialogue between the images and interrupts the grid layout.
Although the book may initially seem over-complicated, readers need to take some time with it. A way in is to see it as a filmic sequence. Indeed at one point, the woman's 'voice' is describing that objects are like "props from a film set". This is an intriguing publication which uses various visual and written narratives to comment on the inescapable nature of the everyday urban experience.
Writer detail:
Lucy Harrison is an artist based in London.
Venue detail:
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