Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Norwich School of Art and Design, Norwich
8 July – 19 August
Reviewed by: Stephanie Douet
Trying to say something vivid about an exhibition where twenty-six artists were chosen from a submission of 1,100 feels like trying to stuff all the clothes I ever owned into a handbag. There is however always an overall direction to each ‘East’, and this year the selectors Jeremy Deller and Dirk Snauwaert took the Tower of Babel as their emblem.
In the luscious full-colour catalogue, Norwich Gallery curator Lynda Morris applies the idea of ‘the artist as moral force’: force is a strong word for this sometimes tentative show. Although the artists have something to say about the world, they seem wary of saying it too loudly, too unequivocally, in these dangerous times. Some of the delicate political interventions smack of Big Brother’s subversive stratagem of depriving housemates of their toothbrushes. Much of the work is physically small or documentary, and there is not a bosom or buttock in sight.
Tellingly, one of the most straightforwardly political works, John Duncan’s photographs of Belfast, is post-conflict – the worst is over; billboards show soon-to-be-built apartments and leisure complexes, a new world that is about to be made. In the charming Two weeks and sixteen Sundays in between, Theresa Nanigian films the patch of sky above her garden. Blue alternates with cloud interspersed with the day’s ghastly headlines in a gentle rhythm; things always change yet always stay the same.
There are suggestions of force. On the opening night Masayuki Susuki, dressed in white judo suit, gracefully weaves martial art into disco moves with comical violence to the accompaniment of a loud dance track, before being ‘flung’ to the ground by a succession of delicate girl challengers. Roman Vasseur mounts an absurdist campaign against those whose enormous and revolting mural in the St George’s estate, East London, amounts to ‘state-sponsored violence’ against its inhabitants. He demands nothing less than the reinstitution of public execution to be used against arty-farty types for crimes of taste against society.
The artists themselves are very evident throughout the exhibition, showing their friendly and unironic faces, and attacking while disarming. They appear working alongside Real People and drawing them into the Path of Art with undertakings eerily reminiscent of the selectors’ own. There are Deller-esque projects involving locals: David Brazier combines The Battle of Orgreave with the Museum of Folk Art and produces Norwich’s Strongest Man and Woman; Matt Stokes effects the transcription of some Northern Soul into a pipe organ recital in three beautiful Norwich churches, and Rebecca Birch records the sliding into the sea of Happisburgh village in a piece not unlike my son’s GSCE geography project.
And can we please give stags a rest?
Stephanie Douet is an artist and archivist at Gallery Borges.
Venue detail:
Norwich School of Art & Design
3-7 Redwell Street, NORWICH NR2 4SN
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