LAURA OLDFIELD FORD, 'Threshold of the Arcades (London 2013)', 2008,
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 208 x 128 cms
As heroine de jour, Carrie Bradshaw might say; "And then I got to thinking... Is it naïve or brave to cut a swathe through that sticky and oft interminable debate that is gender politics, and stage an exhibition simply billed as 'a group show of work by six female artists'?"
Hales Gallery have taken that risk with their provocatively entitled exhibition 'Interior', which opened last week. Aside from the sex of the artists, the show focuses on how the enclosed or decorated interior space may be used as a metaphor for an exploration of materiality and how it relates to the internal thought process. Despite none of the work actually taking on gender issues in its subject matter, this show does not sit on the fence, and its refusal to shy away from work that is clearly female in its sensibility is admirable, and dare I say it, ballsy. So often group shows of this nature err on the side of caution, making a point of selecting work that is almost apologetically neutral; the result being as frustrating for artists as it is for viewers.
Refreshingly, 'Interior' assumes the premise that we are all adults here, who are possessed with an understanding that there may in art, as in life, be differences between the hand and the eye of the male and the female. Even if these differences of outlook and response within the aesthetic realm are only understood on a vague and intuitive level, we probably know it when we see it, and this is enough. Released from the confines of political correctness and excessive justification, a show with a focus on the female eye and mind in its own terms might just be cause for interest rather than redress.
LAURA LETINSKY, 'Untitled #23', from 'Hardly More Than Ever' series, 1997
Chromagenic print, 47.2 x 59.7 cms
In two photographs from Laura Letinsky's 'Hardly More Than Ever' series, leftover food, grubby and crumbled table clothes and dying flowers are depicted in a manner reminiscent of Dutch and Flemish still life paintings of the Golden Age.
Like the calm after the storm, these vignettes of the domestic are disquietingly still and eerie. By placing the objects in her tightly constructed compositions on the very edges of tables, just on the brink of collapse, Letinsky creates interiors charged with a sense of potentiality. It is the cessation of all human activity in these poetic images that encourages the contemplation of subtle dramas.
Subtlety is far from the concerns of the only British, London-based artist in the show, and Laura Oldfield Ford's large-scale painting 'Threshold of the Arcades' is tough and confrontational. Hands on hips, a sexy brunette in a tight-fitting mini dress with hot red lipstick and electric blue heels meets the viewer with a head-on stare. Oldfield Ford is the protagonist in all her paintings, and in this one she stands in the foreground of a distopian urban wasteland as a flock of hapless young men loiter around her. The work vibrates with an edgy confidence, and I already feel safer on the streets of Hackney in the knowledge that Oldfield Ford is out there somewhere presiding over the concrete jungle.
COURTNEY SMITH, 'Flying Dragon', 2006
Furniture Fragments and Plywood
AMY YOES, 'Rear View Mirror', 2006
Stop-motion animation, 1 min 30 seconds
A separate space houses Amy Yoes' stop-motion animation, 'Rear View Mirror', in which 'roomscapes' are created and then at once transformed. Playful and witty, awkward angles and impossible interior perspectives collide like an animated Escher drawing against a soundtrack of moving cogs and mechanisms. Collage and collision are themes also explored in the work of Courtney Smith and Jessica Stockholder, both of whom reconfigure household objects to form hybrid domestic assemblages.
JESSICA STOCKHOLDER, 'Untitled', 1998
Mixed media assemblage, 177.5 x 132 x 98 cms
BETH CAMPBELL, 'My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances (5/2/08)', 2007
Graphite on paper, 127 x 96.5 cms
In 'My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances', Beth Campbell presents a flow diagram outlining the possible outcomes of three recent and unconnected events in her personal life. Written in pencil on a scrappy piece of paper, the work, like the rather banal experiences it describes, is easily overlooked. One such event reads, "recently referred to as 'disarming' after a drink with a new acquaintance". By the end of the diagram, Campbell has exhausted every possible eventuality and anxiety, extrapolating it to the point where she has to see a therapist for the next twenty years.
A celebration of the importance of minutiae, the work is clever and funny. And the outcome which sees the artworld laughing behind Campbell's back whilst she is labelled 'difficult' to work with after offending her new male acquaintance, subtlety reveals for those who didn't already know, that the issue of gender is alive and well in the contemporary art scene.
Sarah Douglas
To watch an interview on Saatchi Online TV with Amy Yoes, one of the artists in the exhibition,
click here.
INTERIOR: Beth Campbell, Laura Letinsky, Laura Oldfield Ford, Courtney Smith, Jessica Stockholder, Amy Yoes
Until 26 July
Hales Gallery
Tea Building
7 Bethnal Green Road
London E1 6LA
www.halesgallery.com
Sarah Douglas is a London-based painter and writer. Since completing her MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in 2005, her work has been widely exhibited. She has curated several exhibitions, and her writing has appeared in Turps Banana, Artreview.com and Total Spec Magazine. She runs Exhibit-K, an organisation that provides insider knowledge on the London art scene. Recent projects include an up-coming exhibition in London in October 2008.
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