Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
The Crafts Council, London
6 February – 23 March
Reviewed by: Frederika Whitehead
Content can be form and form can be content. Formalist painting, for example, takes its form as its content. While conceptual art takes its concept is its form and its realisation becomes its content. Curated by the artist Jonathan Parsons, 'Approaching Content' contains works "where an important part of the content is derived from the very specific way in which it is made".
Kate Owen's Comic words, are mainly onomatopoeic, throwaway exclamations – whoosh, plop, biff, zap, doof – carved on small slate bricks and presented on a low plinth. The instant and impulsive rendered permanent through craft. Adjacent is a work by Tracey Rowledge who painstakingly turns rapid sketches on paper into drawings embossed on leather in gold leaf. What was passionate and rapid is slowly and laboriously recreated; time is drawn out and her labour becomes a virtue of the work. Is this an indictment of our desire for quick fixes, easy answers, high yields and fast returns? In a similar vein Parsons presents The character of human impulsion, two drawings, the second a painstaking copy of the first. The first drawing is a splash of thin, watery paint from a wide flat brush stroke. Viewers can imagine how frustrating the production of the second image must have been. One drawing would signify impulsiveness, the two together show discipline and craft.
Any number of painters might have qualified for selection but Katie Pratt's large and detailed paintings do not seem incongruous in this fairly loose thematic. Nearby are some earrings made by Lin Cheung. Parts of other earrings have been used to make the decorative fronts. Across the room is an immaculately recreated wooden sculpture of a fluorescent light tube by Roy Voss. Both Cheung and Voss adulterate form to create content. They disarm viewers by making it difficult to clearly state the functions of the objects represented. What good is a wooden light bulb? Who could wear a pair of earrings that are so self-conscious of their own earring-ness? Inversion and wordplay are common tools in many of the works here.
The inclusion of a large black and white photograph of a woman in a short skirt and stilettos is defended in a text beside it: "Initially it might seem that Jemima Stehli's Black Stilettos is out of place. It is the only photograph in a series of predominantly hand-crafted objects." The argument for its place in the show was based on the fact that it was made clear in the frame that the photograph was taken by the woman who was also its subject. The intentions of the artist are made manifest by the manner of its production, which means that the form of the work is also its content.
Writer detail:
FREDERIKA WHITEHEAD
is a freelance editorial assistant.
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