Friday 1 February 2013

The Universal Accessibility of Dumb Things


With a title like this, and a Turner prize winner on curation duties, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things is enough to make me wish that I lived in Liverpool. Part of the Hayward campaign to tour exhibitions curated by artists, it includes work from William Blake and Louise Bourgeois, a pair of names (romantic mystic, twentieth century trail-blazer) that I would not have expected  to share a bill.

That juxtaposition, though, is the fun of curated exhibitions - the connections made between artists that aren't so obvious. The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things has a contemporary theme - the line between the real and the virtual but some old school choices.

According to that Guardian article I haven't read through yet, "the real" is the most over-used word in the artistic lexicon. Leckey has a bit of an excuse, as he is drawing comparisons between objects in the physical world and their pals living within computers. The catch-phrase is techno-animism  - nothing to do  with the loud dub outfit,but the illusion of life in inanimate objects.

This does fit rather neatly with my current obsession with object manipulation and masks. However, Leckey is more interested in those odd artefacts that take advantage of modern  technology to talk back: Amazon recommending further reading, the smart adverts on Google searches, the mobile phone that comes to life in my pocket and phones up my friends at random.

Leckey's selections are pretty eclectic: a car made out of clay, art from Robert Gober and Nicola Hicks, a machine that gives automated hugs, a cat mummy, a man who fell in the bog's head (cast in bronze) and a mandrake root.

That last one is a clue to the alchemical leanings of the exhibition. There's a swanky book that has an essay about medieval monster manuscripts and one on TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information. I think Leckey might be trying to start another conversation, as well as the one between the objects: between magical and lateral thinking processes.



The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things: Curated by Mark Leckey, a Hayward Touring exhibition from Southbank Centre opens on 16 February and runs until 14 April 2013 at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX

Tour details
NOTTINGHAM Contemporary
27 April – 30 June 2013

BEXHILL, De La Warr Pavilion
12 July – 20 October 2013




www.southbankcentre.co.uk

No comments :

Post a Comment