INTERFACE
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
REVIEW
New Labour
The Saatchi Gallery, London 3 May – 19 August
Reviewed by: Wil Bolton
The artists currently on show at the Saatchi Gallery's 'New Labour' exhibition are grouped around the idea of handicraft. Proposed as a prevailing concern amongst contemporary makers of art, this conception of hand-crafted work is presented through an emphasis on simple materials, a kind of work ethic, and a reaction against the dominance of conceptual and hi-tech arts. Each of these eight diverse artists employs some element of craft in their use of medium and techniques – from wool to Plasticine, power tools to potato chips.
Enrico David's large works on canvas look at first like paint, but are in fact sewn in brightly coloured wool. They present slender, somewhat androgynous figures in mock classical poses, dressed in vibrant catsuits and stilettos. One reclines coyly in an electric blue suit behind an African mask; another cavorts in green, its face a flower; the hands and feet of one are mutated into huge cyber crystals. The wool stitches give these canvases a neat linear quality that is reminiscent of drawing as well as computer graphics. There are also elements of painting in the use of canvas and the stained backgrounds, along with references to print and textiles. These carnivalesque figures allude both to the tradition of the nude throughout art, and to contemporary design and fashion imagery.
Andreas Schlaegel also reinterprets the tradition of the reclining nude. This time its outline is delineated in potato chips fixed to a black board. For another piece, he has constructed a typical modern armchair from coloured scouring sponges, drawing wittily on Arte Povera, Pop Art and Minimalism in its use of material, colour and form. These are works that give new form and meaning to household items and consumer goods.
Grayson Perry's painted vases and urns combine the traditions of Greek or Chinese ceramics with more contemporary imagery. He decorates his pottery with snippets of text and comic-style representations of figures and media faces. Traditional medium and form are transformed with a kitsch, scrapbook aesthetic.
Rebecca Warren's small sculptures are rough lumps of clay, that in places take the form of flesh and in others simply take the form of clay. High-heeled legs seem to morph from these slabs. Sensuous and a little grotesque, these pieces show an obvious enjoyment of the substance itself and of its modelling – a fascination with matter.
Liane Lang's video work Masturbation is an hour-long looped animation depicting close-up female masturbation. Obscene and funny, it is a pornography in Plasticine, which takes the format of video art, blending in elements of performance and sculpture with the ultimate instrument of cheap animation and child's play.
Martin Maloney's Slade Gardens, SW9 1995 is a massive collage of sticky coloured vinyl. Brash and grotesque playschool figures mince and flounce against a stark white ground in this gaudy plastic take on naive, outsider or child's art.
DJ Simpson's particular brand of craft is DIY. He uses an electric router to draw on various supports, carving and ploughing the surfaces of painted chipboard or reflective aluminium laminate on MDF. The resulting works are huge distressed planes, created solely with household materials and tools. They reference painting, or the idea of painting, employing its tactics and conventions. They play with the heroics of abstract expressionism, but there is a reversal of object and ground. Like giant printing blocks, the line is cut out of the surface, rather than being brushed or poured on. The violent or destructive gesture is shown to be a powerful creative tool.
This is, overall, a strong showing of object-based art with a raw homespun aesthetic. Humorous, throwaway imagery and notions of domesticity, play and the everyday are combined with an interest in artistry and toil. Above all, though, we can see here a love for the very substance of the materials and the processes of making.
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WIL BOLTON
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