Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
The Bull Theatre
Barnet, London
Reviewed by: Keir Smith
Adam Reynolds has created a site-specific sculpture for the Bull Theatre in Barnet, an eighteenth century edifice which once served as a magistrate's court before becoming a pub early in the last century. With infectious humour the artist gently mocks the asymmetrical fenestration of the upper story of the theatre. A stick figure made from welded-steel reclines on top of the right-hand porch of the building. With Herculean effort this individual hauls a steel rope attached by means of a grappling iron to the off-centre middle window as if attempting to drag the window into a more central position on the façade. Such figures, have become the trademark of this artist who believes that the human body is an over-complex mechanism, a response, no doubt, to the experience of his own continuing struggle with spinal arthritis.
Equally characteristic is his employment of humour to engage the attention of spectators. This has been an essential ingredient of Reynold's practice since his student days when he made sculpture by terrorising common household objects. One work involved bending a toothbrush by applying heat to soften the plastic thereby transforming it from an instrument of oral hygiene to a sitting figure. He subsequently developed this invention into a lurid exposé of the lives and loves of a group of toothbrushes ultimately charting their descent into organised crime, a la Quentin Tarantino.
Moving was made with financial aid from the Arts Council of England and the Milly Apthorp Charitable Trust. It joins an impressive list of site-specific works by Reynolds each imbued with his ability to breath life into such radically abbreviated figures, stripping them down to a mere cipher without divesting them of humanity.
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KEIR SMITH
is an artist based in London.
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