Tacitly Speaking
16/02/10
There is a school of thought that says art should speak for itself, that the form the work takes should communicate its ideas to the viewer. The press release for Tacitly Speaking refers heavily to Plato’s theory of forms with its notion that ideas are the key to knowledge. This would imply, therefore, that it is the ideas behind each artwork that are paramount here, yet through the paradoxical title of the show this becomes a challenge to the viewer: discover the ideas that the show ‘tacitly’ speaks, as this where the fundamental reason for the work itself.
This is the point where a review can become insubstantial. As much as I might try to present to you, the reader, a balanced view of what I perceived the show to discuss, it will be exactly that – my perception. My perception and internal recognition of forms and ideas may be different to those you would assert when viewing the same work in the same place. As much as an awareness of theoretical and historical issues might balance this somewhat, my personal response to, lets say, a metal detector or a colour will differ from yours through my experiences and psychological make-up.
In essence this is what Phil Lambert’s work addresses. The simply-named ‘Colour’ consists of a monitor placed on a table with two speakers, a pile of coloured paper, coloured thread on a windowsill and wrapped around a pipe and a colour chart comparing the qualities of tones to the musical scale (accompanied by several different coloured CD cases. Colour, colour everywhere. The monitor flashes the colour sequence quickly, and then goes blank with audio of people’s perceptions of the different colours in its place. This public survey is based around the Lüscher Test, designed to profile people’s personality types through their responses to colour.
The problem is that everything other than the video feels ephemeral, even unnecessary, as if the artist was worried that his work might not fill the room; perhaps this apparent attempt to make the work feel like an installation is to encourage the viewer to consider their own reaction to each colour, but instead it seems like the white void of the space swallows up the Lambert’s attempt to animate it with his paper and cotton. The interaction has already been achieved on an afternoon in Swansea, instead we are asked to consider the given responses of that interaction and perhaps begin to connect this exchange of information.
This idea of interactivity with the viewer is described by the potential in Sam Zealey’s work. This paradoxical construction retains an element of the unknown. A metal detector hangs by a chain from a frame of copper piping set into a black base containing speakers upon which sits the circuitry for the metal detector with its cables sprawling forwards into an amplifier. As the metal detector swings, it senses the copper tubing and alerts us by a loud beeping; this activity, however, is not natural but requires human intervention to set the pendulum in motion and begin the subsequent movement leading to the discovery. Titled ‘Inanimate Consciousness,’ the work begins to ask questions about whether the metal detector could be considered alive – as much as its intelligence is created by the components comprising the circuitry is there a way that this electrical ‘consciousness’ could render the metal detector alive? This potential would not exist without the concerted efforts of mankind and remains unrealised without further intervention to set the pendulum in motion.
This is more of a foray into formalism, then, with the sum of parts in Zealey’s work inviting the viewer to disseminate its value. The paradoxical title begins to sound satirical, as if the works are aligned to question whether an artworks function is to inform or to entertain by being visually pleasing. The latter relies purely on the human brains ability to appreciate beauty and composition, the former a task, which relies on the brain as a tool to extrapolate and unravel ideas within what is seen. The press release becomes problematic here, quoting Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan’ to deride the human brain as ‘the most over-rated organ’. It speaks of indescribable truths and infers that if ‘nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.’ then those things that are worth knowing are not cerebral but intuitive and sensory. This is not how we are taught to look at art, instead a factor in giving artworks value for their form; perception is critical. Each to their own, some might say.
Dividing these two works is Jim Howieson’s ‘Side Parting’. Two sections of curved plastic are integrated into the doorway separating the two rooms creating an elliptical shape through which we must pass, one side is black and the other a dirty turquoise. This intervention into the space dramatically changes its feel, the curve is simple yet creates an uncertainty of their function, where once was a simple opening between two spaces there is now a space-age portal, a vision of simplistic modernity that would not look amiss in a Le Corbusier building or an ocean liner; it is both serious and childlike bringing together both sides of this paradox. The structure is beautiful in its simplicity and production yet it also highlights the doorway as a threshold and therefore imbues this portal with an extra significance as the viewer passes through from one piece of work to another implicitly separating them with its transitional presence whilst simultaneously brining them together through its structure as an artwork.
The inherent problems within the paradoxical title are evident, the show seems to not quite agree with either viewpoint yet doesn’t quite manage to argue with itself. If you stand just behind Zealey’s work, there is a vista in which each work frames another; the copper bars frame the doorway and the doorway the monitor, giving an impression of progression from the intellectual questioning through to the intuitive response.
