Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
ROOM, Bristol
12 January – 13 February
Reviewed by: Peter Suchin
In Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves, the protagonists explore a vast, subterranean labyrinth, the corridors of which, rather alarmingly, constantly shift and slide. I recalled this disturbing novel upon entering Tabatha Andrews’ Descent. Here, in an entirely darkened, silent room of indeterminate dimensions, one sees what appears to be the wall of a cave, its surface illuminated by a single beam of light. As the light slides across the space however, one soon recognises that one is not staring at an actually exposed rock wall, but rather at a rectangular screen. The beam, as it moves back and forth, is not illuminating a part of the space but is in fact projecting the image onto a constructed corner at the end of the room.
This apparent act of scanning a fixed area is thus not what is happening at all. Moving right to left, then returning along its own track, one expects repetition or reversal but the details have changed. Fissures, outcrops, lumps and bumps, the variegated textures of the rock are revealed as multiple and unstable, as though the artist has compressed into this relatively small space an entire complex of caverns, their immense density reduced in the end to the ungraspable fragility of light.
“Light breaks where no sun shines”, wrote Dylan Thomas. “Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart/Push in their tides.” Although Andrews’ source material is solid rock, other more pliable, intimate territories are prominently suggested through her manipulation of the image. The viscous interior of the human body’s tortuous configurations is constantly recalled. Soft and hard, light and dark, the surface and the subterranean are amongst the central coordinates of this work. The atmosphere of Descent is both eerie and abject; something unpleasant yet compulsive lurks in the beauty of this scrambled underworld.
Writer detail:
Peter Suchin is an artist and critic.
Venue detail:
ROOM Artspace & Gallery
4 Alfred Place, BRISTOL BS1 6ST
No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?
To post a comment you need to login
Back to top