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SYNOPSIS BY RACHEL PIMM: On entering the flat, the air space was filled, for the first time in the week, with things. Huge jagged partly painted plaster coated rings like pastel coloured versions of jelly sweets or giant Flintstones style baby bam-bam rock mobiles, casting cartoony shadows. A table and chair stood in the middle of the room, onto the centre of which the film was projected; the only part of the show which was as I’d imagined. A selection of handmade mince pies, Southern Comfort, and beer was served alongside Becks bottles, and left on the table nestled into crumpled paper, food crumbs, cigarettes, and sculptural materials created a convivial setting. Cups of Southern Comfort also hung dangerously tipping above people’s heads. Groups of people stood around the table, watching the action but could not see one another clearly—like a dinner party with a bad centrepiece, which obscures the other guest’s faces. Painted self-portraits partly obscuring email correspondence, about this show and others, also featured on the already crammed desk and followed the flat around, continuing into a second room where a video played in which Jenifer visits a communist sculpture park in Budapest, playfully and theatrically interacting on and around the statues, and to the camera, creating a link to the last part of North by Northwest, set on the altogether fake looking oversized rock faces of Mount Rushmore.
Uniquely, having now seen the whole week’s worth of shows preceding her own, and showing with a new group of people already used to (and occasionally sharing) one another’s practice, Jenifer was aware enough of the qualities of her own work, in comparison to the rest of us, to start up an interesting discussion on the methods of a studio-based practice. She had already mentioned to me what she perceived as the ‘Saint Martins’ approach to sitting and thinking, then buying, collecting or bringing something in that was pre-conceived to have a set conceptual effect or an outcome. This would have involved extensive experimentation at the time of planning, going through all ideas systematically to select one or two, and during execution comes the point when all variables have been thought through and selected or rejected, and all that is left is labour work. In this case surprises can still happen, but like the 300 Spartans at the gate of the rock face they use to cut the enemy into smaller chunks, they can be dealt with one or two at a time, and in turn. Jenny couldn’t tell me exactly how her show would come together in the end as she produced this work by sitting with the detritus for a while and guiding it to turn itself into a considered arrangement of objects that work in an altogether looser and more spontaneous way. Here the surprises are perhaps no more numerous, but spill round the sides coming all at once and in no particular order, to be surprise surprises. In the end, we agreed there was nothing at fault with either practice, only that while I fell into the former style, Jenny fell into the latter; sitting in the room and moving things around until they made sense to her and each other.
In the film, North by Northwest, just as in this show, the central character Roger Thornhill lets the situation guide his actions as the film unfolds, rather than forcefully leading the narrative of the film himself. Even the McGuffin everyone is following is seemingly unrelated to the plot, and resists straightforward themes or meanings, and when one starts to look for a didactic conceptual framework, it grins and wriggles free. It is impossible for us to “make heads or tails of it” as Carey Grant said, both in his lines and to Hitchcock, as an actor making sense of his part. Like the R.O.T book of matches found by the table by Eva Marie Saint, as seen in the selected still, the objects lead us in a mystery, either to a combined sense of meaning, a feeling, or else perhaps towards a red herring.
Uniquely, having now seen the whole week’s worth of shows preceding her own, and showing with a new group of people already used to (and occasionally sharing) one another’s practice, Jenifer was aware enough of the qualities of her own work, in comparison to the rest of us, to start up an interesting discussion on the methods of a studio-based practice. She had already mentioned to me what she perceived as the ‘Saint Martins’ approach to sitting and thinking, then buying, collecting or bringing something in that was pre-conceived to have a set conceptual effect or an outcome. This would have involved extensive experimentation at the time of planning, going through all ideas systematically to select one or two, and during execution comes the point when all variables have been thought through and selected or rejected, and all that is left is labour work. In this case surprises can still happen, but like the 300 Spartans at the gate of the rock face they use to cut the enemy into smaller chunks, they can be dealt with one or two at a time, and in turn. Jenny couldn’t tell me exactly how her show would come together in the end as she produced this work by sitting with the detritus for a while and guiding it to turn itself into a considered arrangement of objects that work in an altogether looser and more spontaneous way. Here the surprises are perhaps no more numerous, but spill round the sides coming all at once and in no particular order, to be surprise surprises. In the end, we agreed there was nothing at fault with either practice, only that while I fell into the former style, Jenny fell into the latter; sitting in the room and moving things around until they made sense to her and each other.
In the film, North by Northwest, just as in this show, the central character Roger Thornhill lets the situation guide his actions as the film unfolds, rather than forcefully leading the narrative of the film himself. Even the McGuffin everyone is following is seemingly unrelated to the plot, and resists straightforward themes or meanings, and when one starts to look for a didactic conceptual framework, it grins and wriggles free. It is impossible for us to “make heads or tails of it” as Carey Grant said, both in his lines and to Hitchcock, as an actor making sense of his part. Like the R.O.T book of matches found by the table by Eva Marie Saint, as seen in the selected still, the objects lead us in a mystery, either to a combined sense of meaning, a feeling, or else perhaps towards a red herring.