No Escape. Julia Rosa Clark at Joao Ferreira
Monday, April 09, 2007
I've been struggling to write about this show all week, firstly having a bit of artworld sickness, and secondly because I enjoyed it and that is often harder to write about. Anyway, Lizza Littlewort almost let me off the hook by sending me the following:Cardboard tears: Julia Clark's “Hypocrite's Lament”.
I've had another epiphany, without even being drunk or in 'the townships'. This time I was drinking water at the opening of Julia Clark's “Hypocrite's Lament”. What was similar about both epiphanies was a flood of relief at finding a space so conducive to a rarified self-indulgent pass-time called thinking. Both shows moved seamlessly past the glass ceiling that says “I studied art theory at university” into the big, uncharted, chaotic, shitty world beyond post-graduate studies where millions of people have to negotiate daily between a rock and a hard place for their spiritual survival.
Julia's show impressed me at first glance with its design sophistication. Boy, was that a good thing to see. Like manna falling from heaven compared with the diet of corporate schlock that masquerades as design in the wild-west capitalist outpost we call home. Another thing I liked was the show's generosity. To reach out to a wide audience and still keep your own integrity is a very hard thing achieve. Being obscure is a piece of piss, really, by comparison. Like doing about one tenth of the job. And thirdly, I thoroughly appreciated Julia's complex negotiation with her own darkness.
There's only one thing you could do better next time, Julia. Throw that book on Guy Tillim out of your bookshelf.
Which is nice piece of writing.
What strikes me, though, is that Julia experiences a fear of things. It would seem surprising for one who has clearly collected millions of things, objects and images, and for one who obviously knows how to use them. But there is a fear of what the profusion of stuff in contemporary culture portends. In the new show it seems to be the end of the world.
Which is not an unreasonable proposition.
Especially as we, she, are constantly involved in making more in a desperate scrabble to make sense of what we have, or where we've gone wrong. In ends up in a hypocritical cycle, impossible to escape, only lament. I'm a little afraid too.
The show spins out to grasp all sorts of diverse concepts from climatic catastrophe to post-colonial worry to personal identity to good old plain creation, and wraps them in a blanket of apocalypse (maybe appropriate here in both it's meanings revelation of knowledge; and end of the world).
Well, what can I say? I liked the show.
(Also if you were there at the opening there was another appearance of the Doing It For Daddy collective. There 15 minutes of frame project has become a real success, with loads of people milling about, some actually buying, and some influential artists giving up some frames.)
Labels: review
posted by Robert Sloon at 6:11 PM
17 Comments:
This blog is truly well-named after the heat magazine, cos the moment there's something more interesting to talk about than a fuckin bitchin slagfest nobody has a word to say.
Me neither actually, except that Robert Sloon is a perceptive fellow
art heat is good
Kendell is 'n moffie
Jesus, what a weekend
Kendell is Hairy.
oh god here we go, where's the barber with his big sharp razor
I reckon mz clark (no "e") has either been at the sugar again or.......it's some kind of OCD?
anonymous 12:48 - I disagree with you. JRC is an intelligent and perceptive artist and this show is a 'better' instalation than her previous "Million Trillion Gazilion" : if you don't believe me, visit it . As Uncle Ernie always said, "Don't miss it while you can".
anonymous 12:48 - I disagree with you. JRC is an intelligent and perceptive artist, with her own way with 'things' and this show is a 'better' instalation than her previous "Million Trillion Gazilion" : if you don't believe me, visit it . As Uncle Ernie always said, "Don't miss it while you can".
run that by me again, maradona
if I looked good in shorts I would also be photographed in them
hi, i am curious maradona as to why you chose to write 'better' in such a non commital way?
I guess maradona was reserving or defering judgement on the desirabality of judgment until Judgement Day
maradona is history
so is god and daddy
the future is hot
the future is temporary, and possibly - for a while - Chinese...
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