Artist Transit Post-Possession
A 'REVIEW' OF PERFORMANCE AFTER POSSESSION AND WHERE ART TAKES YOU
The other day I began thinking about artworks as vehicles for transportation, if they had ever sent me somewhere. I soon gave up on this (at least earnestly) because; one, some artworks definitely had, and two, I can’t really remember anything I’ve ever seen. That beach opera (Lina Lapelytė, Sun & Sea (Marina), 2017) at the Venice Biennale four years ago was a good one. Early-onset senility’s got the rest.
I was thinking about this idea of being lost in an artwork, or immersed, drowned, or suffocated after I went to the preview of All The Small Things at Soup Gallery.
Most of the paintings (they’re all paintings) instil a kind of transportation to Oh Right, You Again. Small paintings of small things. A same-same of images. However, that’s not to say the artists are at fault! We’re of a generation, a group, a culture(?) that’s seen far too many images. It’s probably me and not you. There’s little socks, a little book, a little hand, some little fruits, some little this, a little that, very nice.
It’s not wild that we sometimes can’t be shocked to movement, in the mind, by representation. ‘Sorry, but I’m staying right here thank you,’ fixed in the gallery with buckets of Diet Coke on ice for the preview. I think the Diet Coke on ice transported me further than the artworks. A zany choice. I loved it. Aspartame, carcinogen, vibes.
Maybe art doesn’t have to send you anywhere, maybe you can just look at a painting and think, that’s nice. I looked at most of the paintings at Soup Gallery and went, these are really nice—definitely not out loud—and thought, I’ll maybe think on this more.
But did the art move me about at the Royal Academy Open Studios? Sort of.
I caught myself focusing on the moneyed air the RA stinks of; the rich energy, patrons who can’t tell if someone’s dead or alive, the flutes, and crudités on ice. The general weight of the evening, passed from one hand to the other, is especially showroom-like. Put some work up on the walls, leave out a sketchbook; or install a mini exhibition for sound, video or a cumbersome sculpture, or stage a half-hour performance.
One artist runs on a treadmill with winning rosettes pinned to a catsuit, equestrian gag in mouth, cantering in place to a violinist playing William Tell Overture Finale (Lolly Adams, Show Pony, 2023). What if someone had bought it? Took Lolly Adams home and set up the treadmill in their hallway? The violinist gets in the way; every time the collector tries to leave the house, doing that dance before passing a pedestrian on the street, stabbed in the eye with the end of a horsehair bow.
Returning to the art transportation question from before, where did everyone go watching this artist run? Some people went to the bar. Would the artist get breaks at home, would the sale of the work involve a salary or is it bought like an ornament? I know that’s not how performance art sales work but please humour me! Please!
Alternatively, at the RA, an artist stands still, naked, in a walkway, next to a sculpture for 45 minutes (Zachariah Riley, Flirt, 2023). Art for pervs if one reads the work sexually. It’s called Flirt but it’s pretty cold. I get it; high art, academia, blah, blah.
Back to school, Abramović flavour. The work sent me to the RA, which is where I was. The work smacked me against the walls and let me bleed there. Had a patron bought it, would they have to buy the entire subbasement of the Royal Academy with all the sculptures? Buy the context of the Abramović exhibition upstairs? Buy that huge plaster cast with a massive ass? Hope so. All stowed away in a crowded spare room.
My friend staged his friend facedown on the floor in a workplace incident tableau (Jame St Findlay, A Little Life, 2023). A body in the foyer next to an overturned water cooler bottle, a mop and a bucket. He’s fallen! He’s dead! But maybe it’s too sexy?
And again, a patron takes this work home and the performer dies—for real—is that a success? Immoral? Big yikes? Does the performer’s death get to the true sadness of the work? The comical, whimsical blunder, the minimised death? Is it twink death?
As an aside, Jame’s performance is called A Little Life, which; spoiler for the book of the same name by ‘infamous homophobic torture pornographer’, Hanya Yanagihara; refers to the moment when one pedophile tells the boy protagonist of the novel to smile more while being sexually assaulted by other pedophiles for cash.
If I’m to be transported by art, I would like it to be outta here!
All at once there’s blood on the side of my head and I feel deeply uncomfortable. I can’t stop thinking about collectors’ homes full of exhausted, naked, dead artists and what’s worse for one’s health, the commercially-funded Diet Coke at the gallery called Soup or being in the company of murderer-collectors at the Royal Academy?
The next day, I’d intended to go to a Kawaii Agency exhibition preview at Filet Space called Flop Era (love that we’ve already started AI-generating names for art projects), but instead, I lay in bed and hooked up with one of my neighbours.
Stuffed after Christmas dinner, on a turbulent plane, ‘If I have one more bite I’ll be sick.’
—Andy x