The London Open 2022
The only thing missing from the 70s style entrance filled with Madeleine Pledge’s empty ceramic boots and Rafał Zajko’s automated feed machines is a “NO HUMANS” signs. I didn’t find one, but I did get distracted by Alicia Reyes McNamara’s multi-tailed nymphs with alluring, come hither looks. It’s an alien, mysterious and puzzling opening.
As I round the corner I imagine the machines were incubating Eva Fàbregas’ primordial-like objects I find oozing around the next room. They’re being carefully watched by William Cobbing ceramics that look like squishy wads of loo roll thrown against the wall, sprouting orifices and limbs reaching out to embrace life. What are all these… things? These strange entities that have just enough human-like features to make me ponder what it actually means to be human.
It’s a question that starts to be addressed by the painters Milly Thompson, Mohammed Sami and Gareth Cadwallader, who put distinctly more human forms, and focus, into their works. Except they mostly further the curiosity. It’s left to the video artists — lots and lots of video artists — to more explicitly delve into our enormous range of emotions.
Rory Cahill and George Mackness’ empty apocalypse reminds me of lonely lockdown walks. Julianknxx translates the stresses of city living into poetry and movement. Beth Fox manages to find absurd humour in the most disgusting experiences, sharing the kinds of amusing housekeeper anecdotes many viewers had hoped to get from Maid, instead of the sobering account of domestic abuse and the welfare state that it actually was.
There’s so much video (arguably too much) that I’m drawn to the more elaborate installations: banks of monitors that encircle the viewer, or colourful wall graphics that call out to me from across the gallery. I want to see more. I want to listen in and hear human voices, not stand back and read subtitles. Most of what I encounter keeps my attention far longer than anticipated (a rarity with modern video art) but there are some disappointing pieces. A VR world I couldn’t figure out how to navigate foreshadows the devastation to come in the most prescient part of the show.
The main gallery upstairs presents a succession of artists that address political, social, sex and gender issues, ultimately leading to a room full of newspapers and printing plates that Eloise Hawser collected during the lockdowns. They’re neatly compact and stored away, much like our easily forgotten memories of Thursday night NHS claps. A reminder of time passing, and that some things that so many of us now consume digitally are still made the old fashioned way, and produce old fashioned waste. Unlike the automated tomato farms that Gerard Ortín Castellví explores. Those might very well continue nurturing crops long past the time when there are humans around to consume them.
It’s a jarring exposé, especially at a time when so many UK supermarket shelves are either empty or overpriced. Inês Neto dos Santos proposes fermentation as a collaborative, sustainable option that reinforces community, but I suspect the ramshackle survival cloak by Anna Chrystal Stephens is the inevitable haute couture if rampant inflation and the widening have/have-not imbalance forces more and more people onto the streets.
These last thoughts on our future surround 180 dead parakeets that lay between you and the exit. It’s not a hopeful way to end the show, and this vision of mass death from Patrick Goddard reminds me of tourists feeding them in Hyde Park. Crowds trampling off of the footpaths, smartphones aimed at outstretched arms offering harmful treats in exchange for social media selfies they’ll have forgotten by lunchtime.
Through an incredibly wide variety of media and messaging, the 46 artists in this triennial exhibition show us how they see the world. Some might make you laugh, others could make you cry. They’ll leave you with more questions than answers, and an optimism about the power of contemporary art to energise and engage you with more than just passively pretty imagery.
Until 04 Sept at Whitechapel Gallery
Visit the web listing and follow @WhitechapelGallery on Instagram for more information.
Artists in this review:
Gareth Cadwallader — @garethcadwallader
Rory Cahill — @r_cahill
Gerard Ortín Castellví — @gerardortin
William Cobbing — @william.cobbing
Eva Fàbregas — @eva_fabregas
Beth Fox — @bethsface
Patrick Goddard — @_patrick_goddard_
Eloise Hawser — @eloisehsir
Julianknxx — @julianknxx
Alicia Reyes McNamara — @aliciossa
Madeleine Pledge — @madeleinepledge
Mohammed Sami — @mohammedsamistudio
Inês Neto dos Santos — @inesns
Anna Chrystal Stephens — @annachrystal_
Milly Thompson — @millythompson01
Rafał Zajko — @rafal_zajko