CHRIS FREMANTLE

Overwhelming, moving, shocking, humorous and irreverent. Last hours of the exhibition (16.30 on the last day). So much I didn’t know as well as many I did but hadn’t seen other than in books.

That being said a very significant proportion of this is documentation of one sort of another – documentation to record site specific performance (eg Ukeles and Shaffer) or documentation to enable or make us see real life exclusions (eg Godwin), or activism such as anti-nuclear protests, and resistance to mineral extraction. Some work did documentation in other ways such as using existing media (eg Bethônico’ use of newspaper documentation of mud slides),

The entrance juxtaposition (above) of Simryn Gill’s work, on the one hand smaller images of plastic bags stuck in vegetation after water levels recede or on the other larger images of open cast mining sites in Australia, kind of sets the stage.

There are multiple explorations of being other or dissolving – Aguilar, Corrine, Hammer, Huggins, Mendieta, Miracles, Neo Naturists, Shaffer, Urya, Woodman (and others).

There are long term explorations of multiple dimensions of reality in huge places (eg Chloe Dewe Matthews’ ‘Caspian: The Elements’).

Not all the work is activist, some is simply sensuous and vivid such as Carolina Caycedi’s ‘Multiple Clitoris’ (below) made from kaleidoscoped images of a river.

What’s missing though?

The ecosexuals…

Anything living…

The manifestos…

The ‘public artists’…

Whilst the New Naturists and others are doing something along these lines, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle amongst others are reimagining Earth as lover and their various ‘marriage ceremonies’ would have added a distinct dimension.

And along those lines there is literally no living material in the exhibit… I know the Barbican can do it .. they had the Harrisons’ Full Farm in ‘Radical Nature’. What about Jackie Brookner’s work which might have brought water from the roof into the gallery and purifies it flowing over a mossy tongue – look it up, it’s great!

I didn’t see Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto of Maintenance Art which is a foundational document in this field, not any of Agnes Denes’ Manifestoes. And I bet there are many others, the inclusion of which would have also troubled the curatorial authority. Which raises a thought about how conventional the display is – largely framed works arranged nicely with neat labels. What if the Manifestoes had been printed on the walls behind or adjacent to the works? Layering up meaning…?

Finally the ‘public artists’, though that is too neat a category for Betsy Damon and the Keepers of the Waters or Aviva Rahmani and her Trigger Point Theory or Bonnie Ora Sherk and ‘The Farm’ or Patricia Johansson, or Jody Pinto, or ffs Loraine Leeson and her project with the Old Geezers just up the road on the River Lea creating renewable energy…

The review in the New York Times highlights many of these concerns, concluding with questions for the institution around how it engages with what the works in the show are raising and drawing attention to…

Great exhibition, really glad I saw it, definitely buying the book…