The eclectic, multi-referential work of Canadian-born Rodney Graham gets its first full scale UK airing at the Lisson Gallery this month. Last summer the Lisson presented the British premiere of “Vexation Island”, Graham’s acclaimed film of a Beckettian desert island encounter between a parrot, a coconut palm and the artist-as-Captain Cook. And there’s more historical flavour in his new film “City self/country self” which the Lisson describes as a “period drama set in 18th-century Paris with the artist playing the two main roles”. Graham’s interest in rock-music culture has also increased over the past few years, and he will be giving two performances in London during the show as well as releasing a single, “What is happy, baby?”
It is firmly back to Britain in the here and now with Common Culture, three artists from Manchester and Liverpool who describe themselves as creating “Pop Art for the 21st century” with an intention to “smear the surface of serial minimalism with the curry sauce, laced with flecks of pie crust, of today’s Britain.” It is appropriate, therefore that their most recent work at Gasworks consists of a full sized, fast food kiosk, similar to those found outside fairs and rock concerts which, although somewhat geometrical and minimal in shape, is also distinctly dishevelled from its journey down to London from the North.
The architectural photographs of John Riddy present a more orderly view of their surroundings, and his current show at Frith Street juxtaposes art-history sanctioned natural surroundings such as the Alps, seascapes and cloudscapes with images of 20th-century architectural projects—including Le Corbusier’s “Firminy vert”—which attempted to realise a modern Utopia, and now exude the nostalgic pathos of passing time and thwarted ideals.
Simon Morley describes George Orwell as “a utopian who saw through all the available utopias but did not give up on the obligation to hope that things can and must be otherwise than they are” and his new paintings at Percy Miller each represent the title page of a different book by Orwell, based on first editions to be found in the British Library. With the text painted in pale grey on a white ground, these works summon up the ghost of Robert Ryman as well as that of George Orwell, while at the same time interrogating the legacy of Modernism, and what painting can still be made to say and do. Their price is £1,000.
“Why be discreet when showing off is so much fun?” is the title of Graham Little’s large new sculpture at asprey jacques. Based on the title of a Vogue article, the sculpture is part logo, part Lichtenstein, bearing the painted-on exclamation “Ahh!” borrowed from a jumper design. These fashionable concerns also extend to a new series of coloured pencil drawings where images are sourced from fashion house catalogues and adverts but the turned up collars and poses are given a baroque, art historical twist, alluding to glamour past as well as present.
The first London exhibition of Ukraine-born, London-based artist Julia Kissina at Wigmore Fine Art also taps disquietingly into art history, especially her “Fairy” series of large scale colour portraits in which young women in period costume parody the allegories of the vanitas tradition. A new and abject dimension is given to traditional intimations of mortality, however, with each sitter being given a gruesome “flesh wig”, a hairstyle modelled out of raw flesh. In her latest series, “Toys”, sulky adolescent girls pose for the camera, their limbs distorted by a range of prosthetics. These macabre spins on bodily beauty sell for £3,000.
Rut Blees Luxemburg is now well known for her photographic views of the city at night, and her haunting photographs draw on a rich and poetic vein of German Romanticism, while being firmly in the contemporary world. Her new work at Laurent Delaye continues to explore “the psyche of the city” and she has produced a publication Liebeslied/my suicides in collaboration with the philosopher Alexander Garcia Düttmann who has produced texts in response to her images.
Paul Kenny’s photographs refer to a more natural landscape, with his inspiration coming from repeated visits to remote sites in North West Scotland and Lancashire. In some of his images on show at Purdy Hicks, Kenny integrates his surroundings into his photographs, as with “Seaworks”, a series made by painting layers of sea water directly onto the film and using the resulting salt deposits as a negative to print from in the darkroom.
Back in 1998 the space that is now Fa1 Gallery was the studio of Dutch artist Hilarius Hofstede, and so, now that Fa1 is due to close its doors in this venue it is fitting that Hofstede has returned to produce the space’s final show in this location. Following his major exhibition at the Stedelijk, Hofstede has returned to his old haunt to create “The state of Denmark Street”, an installation that whips up associations of the area, including the fact that the former Sex Pistols front-man lived in the building opposite. Something Rotton in the State of Denmark Street, indeed. Until Fa1 relocates to new premises in Autumn 2001 it is planning to put on a variety of projects throughout London, the first being a new neon work by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone which, throughout December and January is shining an affirmative “HELL—YES” out into Berners Street, a wake up call, perhaps to the lounge lizard clientele of the Sanderson Hotel opposite.
Gimpel Fils Gallery may be closing after its current show of Paragon Press print projects for a full refurbishment in the New Year, but more draconian is 97-99 Gallery’s swansong show in its current incarnation which goes under the title of “The gallery has been completely vandalised!”. Gallery director Alfred Camp is somewhat reticent as to the exact nature of this four-artist “response to the concept of vandalism”, but The Art Newspaper can reveal that Beata Veszely is working with large amounts of horse manure provided courtesy of the stables at Bow Police Station. Mr Camp also ominously adds that this exhibition, which marks the closure of 97-99 Gallery and the opening of Alfred Camp Gallery in 2001, “is designed to blur the boundaries between participant and viewer” and an international tour is being planned: “we’re hoping to vandalise a lot of other galleries around the world.”