I personally wouldn't recommend the Wolverhampton place to anyone. Eclectic multiple-show venues can be good if either given a clear distinction between exhibitions or tangiable and convincing links between them. The New Art Gallery in Walsall pleasantly hadoukens its way into my memory. However i've never been to a gallery more thrown together and half arsed than this. I had a bad feeling the very second I walked in and saw Steve McQueens new cabinet work featuring mock up postal stamp sheets printed with the faces of soldiers whom have died during service in Iraq. I was invited to sign a petition to have these things circulated into actual use. I politely declined. Lets just say i'm not on board when it comes to this idea that men and women are fighting in the middle east to ensure the freedom of gods own country. Besides, being an internal terrorist it wouldn't be the right thing to do.
To be fair to Wolverhampton things started to look up when I nervously backed away from McQueens piece (whilst dodging all the imaginary rolled up Sun newspapers eager to smack me over the head in heroic righteousness) when I entered into the somewhat more reasonable and open ended exhibition about conflict. The Northern Ireland Collection: Fresh Perspectives had some exceedingly good work on show. Much touted (and rightly so) were Paul Grahams large photographs of Irish locales bearing traces of the animosity between protestants and catholics such as graffiti, paint marks 'tagging' territory and military personal conducting a stop and search on a quiet country road. Rita Duffy's altered object sculpture Veil takes a cruelly small and cramped cell from a disused womens prison and through the spy holes you'll a vibrantly/violently red interior with glass tear drops hanging from its ceiling. A very potent message for how easily basic human rights can be suspended in face of political and social strife.
Sadly there wasn't much that inspired me after that. There was some cutting edge ceramics by someone called XUE Lu in a main exhibition space foyer, seemingly just there because they could be. They were rather good to be fair. If only the gallery could of been bothered to organize an ACTUAL collection as opposed to about 5 plates on a pedestal. There was a strangely funny animation hidden under some stairs by a man called Andrew McDonald which featuring a headless man pottering around on a rocky landscape shaking his fists and hiding just below the outcrops edge. It was much better that all the lovely chummy paintings of cats and soft porn nudes in the next room.
Needless to say at this point I gave up on the place. There was some victorian art upstairs and another exhibition about works on paper. Apart from fairly interesting additions by Toby Ziegler and Ruth Claxton it was equally dull. I won't mention the sense room, at least not without shuddering with cliched fear. Wolverhampton Art Gallery isn't doing itself any favors by trying to be every kind of art gallery and museum imaginable. The space could be used better in an IKON gallery esque manner. Hosting 2 or at most 3 solo exhibitions. Its a varied venue but its so badly curated that its events totally lack any sort of context and ultimately any point.
However - today I went to the IKON in Brum, and once again that wascally' gallery has given me nothing to complain about. The 1st floor exhibition of Victor Alimpiev's video art (including the very surreal To Trample An Arable Land, the name co-opted as the exhibitions title) was definately my highlight of the month. The first video you are confronted with shows the back of two girls heads. The one furthest from the viewer stands next to a long pinkish curtain or flag, the closest to us stands behind the other performing odd and seemingly senseless actions with her hand against the nape of more distant girls neck and back.
Though gentle and achingly uneventful her actions feel threatening and suggest infliction, but its that subtely I mentioned that undermines that fearful aspect with something more intimate and consensual. There could be elements of both in their relationship, or none at all. The facelessness and muteness of the actors makes this video his most abstract and thus could be read in very non figurative non emotive ways. Whilst chatting about it to one of the guides a mother and her young children sat down to watch the piece. One of her sons whispered "is this going scary mum?" with a noticeable tremble in his voice. He's got a point.
The exhibitions self-titled piece was esoteric... Oh all right it was difficult and bloody odd! But i'd say thats its strength and ultimately why I liked it so much. Unlike the afforementioned video we actually saw our protaganists faces. There was four girls stood on the lowest point of a ramp and behind them were an indeterminate amount of other people carrying flagpoles. My current estimate after watching the credits at the end and being surprised by how many people actually performed / how many I actually saw is about 500 billion individuals. Over the course of 15 minutes they inched up the ramp, stopping often to crouch or sit down, in one of the most brutally minimal and slow performances i've ever seen commited to film. Another piece that held my attention was Wie heisst dieser platz? which involved a young lady speaking to (eventually almost screaming) at a group of uncomfortably huddled in German. They slowly but surely turn their heads away from her, exiling her from the group. She stands right up to their faces but even this is enough in Alimpiev's closely shot world to suggest ostracization.
You really should go see this if you live in Birmingham and are even vaguely interested in video and/or performance art. Two other pieces called My Breath and Whose is this exhalation? are featured are they throw in some theatre/opera elements for good measure. Apparently theres another video showing in the tower room but being the huge prat I am forgot to go see it for myself.
On the 2nd floor are some very good paintings by someone called Semyon Faibisovich. He takes pictures on his mobile phone of unpretentious and slightly eccentric individuals he comes across in his native Razgulyai district in Moscow. He then expands and enlarges this pixellated photorealist paintings. One piece entitled Builder is massive. It consists of gargantuan close up of a vaguely bemused builders face spread out over two canvasses. I could of swore it was bigger than my house. Whilst it didn't captivate me in the same way Alimpiev's complex non-narratives did it nethertheless fills me with joy when an artist paints the ordinary to reveal the extraordinary. Not a bad day by any means when you consider that I was supposed to be stacking shelves.
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/
http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/
An Introduction to Fallen Over
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