Unheimlich

Pete Smith, ‘Lot’, 2008.

REVIEW

Leeds Met Gallery, Leeds
18 April – 17 May

Reviewed by: Lara Eggleton

An exhibition exploring the concept of the ‘unheimlich’ (roughly translated as ‘uncanny’, or ‘un-homely’) might have seemed strangely unexpected to Sigmund Freud if he were to encounter it today. The pioneer of psychoanalysis would perhaps have renegotiated his relationship with the visual arts, fully realising the profound effects his controversial scientific methods have had upon the art world. His work on dream interpretation, the repression of memory, and concepts such as the uncanny have left a deep and lasting imprint upon the history of modern art practice and theory. A century on, Freud’s work continues to inspire practitioners and theorists alike, producing new approaches to the plumbing of the unconscious as a method of working through ideas and communicating concepts, however surreal or illusive.

Curated by Matt Roberts, ‘Unheimlich’ includes the work of Steve Bishop, Rachel Goodyear, Matt Lippiatt, Pete Smith and Clara Ursitti, and takes for its starting point Freud’s 1919 essay Das Unheimliche. Investigating the underside of consciousness, the exhibition presents a series of contradictions, slippages and fissures of the unconscious mind, exposing the inherent strangeness within familiar experience – the unpredictable realm of the uncanny. Though the bright and spacious gallery at Leeds Met feels slightly over-saturated with sensory elements, a number of works succeed in offering an unnerving intimacy that lives up to the exhibition’s title.

Smith’s Lot offers an arresting theatre of ‘animism’ (the idea that objects or things may have a life of their own beyond our perception), comprised of a group of four grotty mattresses stood on end, each squirming and gyrating with the movement of lo-tech machinery fitted with mannequin torsos and appendages. The strong pornographic nature of the piece is balanced by an absurd recognition of vernacular objects that have come to life. The title makes a double reference to the felt emptiness of a vacant lot and a story from the Old Testament that describes Lot being seduced by his daughters, who falsely believe that they are the last survivors after the fall of Babylon. Far from making a moralising statement about the sacred and the profane, Lot takes the viewer further into the twisting crevasses of incestuous desire and abject terror.

With her notably subtler work, Selection from the Dolphin Girl Porcelain Collection, Clara Ursitti collapses our associations with ceramic kitsch and mirrored table tops into a reflective orgy of bestial desire. Miniature pairs of dolphins and women frolic upon a mirror shelf cut into the shape of an ornate wave, playfully cavorting or engaged in copulation. Reflected upon the wall as shadows, their elegant forms are transformed into a dark display of taboo and transgression. In a similar manner, Goodyear’s series of drawings incorporate a powerful transgressive ‘slip’, luring the viewer through a false sense of familiarity with flowerpots and woodland creatures only to reveal a damp and lecherous underside. The exposed genitals in Girl with Foxes conjures up a sense of wild and deviant behaviour, intertwined with a child-like innocence; the complex terrain of sexual psychology playing itself out in delicate lines and soft, menacing forms.

The influence of Freud’s legacy upon the visual arts can be felt within the very impact of a number of works in ‘Unheimlich’. The ability of the visual image to incorporate multiple and contradictory meanings holds an enduring fascination for contemporary artists and curators. As Freud strove to look beyond a theory of the beautiful to develop an ‘aesthetics of anxiety’, artistic process became a flexible vehicle with which to explore and represent the intersecting processes of the mind. Perhaps never fully recognising the potential of art to harness and reflect the psychoanalytic method, he might now see its closely bound relationship to the space of the unconscious. A single exhibition can only brush the surface of the wider discourse of the uncanny, but as a collection of works ‘Unheimlich’ provokes a certain amount of ‘working through’ on the part of the viewer. Distancing our immediate or singular readings and complicating the process of viewing, the exhibition does well by its Freudian muse.

Lara Eggleton is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at the University of Leeds, and writes independently on the subject of contemporary art and theory.

INTERFACE

REVIEW

Unheimlich

Post your comment