Indifferent Matter: New Exhibition at Henry Moore Institute Reviewed … Without Art Waffle.

The other day I got an email asking if we wanted a review of a new art exhibition at a local gallery. Of course! I said, and shot off a link to the style guide and a jokey warning that we don’t do art waffle on this site.

“I don’t see how I could possibly write about art without a bit of waffle,” came the reply, “how else do you talk about ideas, and meaning, and significance?”

“If you need to waffle then they must be bad ideas with no meaning and little significance … why would anyone care to read that?” I said, “and most likely the art is crap too if you really need to waffle about it.” Needless to say we lost the contribution – but not to worry, there are plenty of other sites in Leeds keen to cater to the aesthetically credulous so I’m sure the sum of arty waffle in the city will be increased whether I like it or not.

When I joked about this exchange a couple of days later with a friend in the pub I didn’t get quite the affirming response I was after. Instead of agreeing with me, clinking glasses and joining in the chuckles at our waffly friend’s quandary, she challenged me to prove my point; “You do it then! You write about art without arty waffle. If you’re so clever, show us.”

“Pfft” I said, “easy … tell you what, I’ll even let you choose the exhibition. Anything you like (within Metro travelling distance, obviously).”

She rummaged in her bag. “The thing at Henry Moore Institute, you said you liked it. I picked up the leaflet … Here,” she said, shoving a piece of expensive looking folded paper at me, “read this and tell me you could write about the exhibition without waffle, pretension or witless pomposity.”

“Hmm, The HMI don’t make it easy” I said, taking in the first sentence of the brochure with a sigh, “but look, it’s a good exhibition so I’ll give it a go …”

So, the first sentence of the brochure for Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture says that the exhibition “explores how objects resist and are coerced into becoming sculptures and are accorded cultural and historical value.” My first reaction to this was that it was going to be a very short and pointless exploration; I may be being overly rationalist about this but objects simply occupy space; they can’t resist in any way other than the very literal getting in the way kind of sense, and only conscious beings with intention and individuality can be coerced. What we have here is a metaphor, simply one way of looking at things. It would make as much sense to say the objects begged to become exhibits, or were seduced into sculpture (and that would actually be more fun.)

The exhibition consists of work by four American artists “who made radical shifts in the understanding of sculpture through acts of naming and display,” paired with ancient objects that “challenge boundaries of classification and naming.” I sort of understand the first claim but would argue that it’s the artists’ position in the power structure of art institutions that allowed them to get away with playing around with conventions. I could stick a pencil through a box of Smarties and balance it between two empty diet Coke cans on the office window and print a label saying

Phil Kirby

“DASEIN ANALYSIS” (Empty Calories)

2013

Contents of office waste bin

and I don’t think my radical act of naming and display will rock the foundations of Western art history (I am looking for commissions, however.) I’m less convinced by the second claim. It seems to me that the way the sciences progress is so completely different to the way the arts develop that one doesn’t really shed much light on the other.

The first piece that catches your eye in the exhibition is called ‘ “Untitled” Placebo’ (an untitled work with a title! Crazy). You can’t fail to notice this as it is a ten metres by seven (or thereabouts, I wasn’t carrying a tape measure) expanse of small glittering silver objects laid on the gallery floor. From a distance I thought they were nuts and bolts but they are in fact sliver foil wrapped boiled sweets (pineapple to be precise, and made in Leeds). The brochure says that visitors are “invited to consume” the sweets but there’s no indication in the gallery that this is the case. Visitors apparently do tuck in, invitation or not, and the sweets aren’t rationed, so grab yourself a handful. At the end of the day the gallery replaces whatever has been taken – they have a ton of sweets secreted about the premises but they aren’t saying where – and return the piece to it’s original dimensions, which is the weight of an adult human (whatever that may be.) It is a very beautiful thing to look at and it’s easy to see why people feel comfortable touching and taking from it, once they cotton on it’s only confectionery. And I think that’s the point of it, to play with our expectations of appropriate material and acceptable interaction with a sculptural object. Boiled sweets are cheap, mass-produced and have quite negative cultural connotations – sculpture is meant to be expensive, individually crafted and permanent.

Beside the sweet sculpture there’s a collection of ancient Chinese objects found in burial sites. These are so old that their use is a mystery and nobody knows what they were originally called. What we do know is that they are currently rather valuable (hence alarmed glass cabinet) so definitely best keeping your interaction with these pieces to conventional reverential distance. Awe is recommended.

To the right of the silver sculpture (which does dominate the space, to be honest) there’s a smallish perspex box with grass growing on a tray on top. This does feel a bit of an anti-climax after the brashness and bling of Untitled, but the point is the same. Perspex? Grass? How is that sculpture? The only way you know is that it’s in an exhibition in a recognised and authorised institution – it wouldn’t work in the allotments on Dewsbury Road, no matter what you called it or how it was displayed. Next to this piece is a piece of newly discovered mineral species “undergoing naming”, which does sound pretty strenuous. Once it is given its proper title (by the International Mineralogical Association) its identity and place will be fixed – no matter where it goes, that’s what it will be from then on.

Andy Warhol’s “Silver Clouds” is in the next space. Familiar enough – though I’ve never seen it before personally – it plays with all the same ideas of the previous pieces. We expect sculpture to be solid and significant. All the piece really is is thirty silver, off the shelf helium balloons (that look like pillows from a Space 1999 boudoir) being blown around the gallery by a standard office fan. But again the effect is genuinely beautiful and comical at the same time. Individually the balloons float and spin above your head moving like jettisoned bits of Apollo 11, and frequently they descend upon the unsuspecting head of an innocent art aficionado inspecting the other work in the gallery space, causing much hilarity. Collectively the balloons tramp around the space like prisoners in a recreation yard, mostly in a world of their own but occasionally pushing, shoving, jostling when encountering a fellow inmate (if you listen carefully you can almost hear them squabble.) Standing in the corner of the gallery space batting a sinking balloon back into formation is quite an aetherial experience.

The silver balloons share the space with a piece I’m not sure I understood. A couple of Roman statues – one bust of a lady with improbable hair and one pair of strapping Roman legs, the remains of what must have been quite imposing (the guy has size 14 sandals, he’s a giant.) I tried to reconstruct the pose of the full statue … which resulted in me almost falling over and knocking down the black screen which divides the space. If anyone could tell me what that statue would have stood like I would love to know.

The final piece is “Asphalt Lump”, which is exactly what the title suggests. Again we are meant to believe that the act of naming is the significant thing in making this object a piece of sculpture. But again I think the more interesting question is which artists get the right to name, and what institutions endow them with the power to display? The blob of congealed industrial effluent plays with the idea that sculpture has to be valuable, designed, non-utilitarian. It’s placed next to a collection of eoliths, which were once thought to be man made but current archaeological opinion is that they are naturally occurring objects. It seems unlikely to me that this opinion will change as it is a result of peer-reviewed, expert inquiry, whereas the sort of stuff that goes on in the naming and displaying in the art world is down to the whim of the market.

In the end this is only my very impressionistic opinion based on one visit. And I may be entirely wrong. Best thing is get along and make up your own mind. I’ll even lend you my brochure. Let me know … just don’t waffle!