In May 2016 I'd attended a major Mona Hatoum show at Tate Modern and I came away with mixed feelings. I'd praised her ability to raise the everyday into the extraordinary and the mundane into the marvellous but I'd also bemoaned her lack of originality and her heavy borrowing from artists like Carl Andre and Claes Oldenburg. As I moved round the Tate show I warmed to her work but still found the overly haughty press release to be alienating and patronising.
It certainly didn't help. But with her new, and free, show of recent work, Remains to be Seen at Bermondsey's White Cube, that was unlikely to be a problem. You simply pick up two stapled sheets of A4 at the desk and work your own way round one small and one large gallery assessing her work for yourself. As opposed to being told that it's challenging, radical, or dangerous.
Map (mobile) (2019)
Of course, art can be all these things but what rarely seems to be said about Hatoum's work is that it's actually quite good fun. I spent ages identifying various land masses on her mobile map and a large and youthful group were having plenty of fun taking photos of each other posing with Remains to be Seen. The Instagram generation know how to have a high old time.
As before, there is some vague high end conceptual blather to back it all up. Said A4 sheets mention"systems of confinement and the architecture of surveillance", "themes of mobility and conflict", "poetic charge", and "metaphoric resonance". Works boast of being restrictive, oppressive, and claustrophobic. Or even of being "shadows of the solid objects they once were".
Remains to be seen (2019)
Dark Matter (2019)
Hatoum has appropriated the materials one would more often associate with a war zone or an industrial site and made art of them and though they may make us think, obtusely, of conflict or industrial accidents, they also look rather photogenic. Dark Matter and Inside Out look like models of brains ready to unfurl in front of us, Orbital I plays on another of Hatoum's favourite tropes, the globe, and A Pile of Bricks?
Well, it's a pile of bricks. There's no getting round that. But Carl Andre got there first. Hatoum's media is, most definitely, of the 'mixed' kind. The White Cube exhibition makes use of bronze, concrete, steel, and wood but also less traditional materials like magnets, nails, and hair. There are lithographs and acrylics next to zinc plated steel and glass and wire mesh but, confusing as it often is, the works do seem to work together as an ensemble.
Inside Out (2019)
Orbital I (2018)
A Pile of Bricks (2019)
Remains (cabinet) (2019)
Maps aside (I love maps), my favourite parts of the show were the wire mesh and wood Remains works. I suspect that in naming the show after them they were Hatoum's too. Or at least she considered them to be the most resonant and respective of what she's been trying to for the last three to four years.
They resemble, as you can see, the aftermath of an inferno. They also come closest to realising Hatoum's stated intention of being shadows of the solid objects they once were. I mean, they're still solid - just about - but you wouldn't try to sit on that chair, eat your dinner off that table, display your best crockery in that cabinet, or let your kids play with those toys.
Remains of the Day (2016-2018)
Remains (play space) (2019)
Quarters (2017)
There's a sadness about that work and there is too with 2017's Quarters, a maze of what look like decommissioned military beds. There's no explanation for it and, perched behind a partition, it's easy to imagine you've walked into a store cupboard by mistake. 2013's Hair Mesh is even more baffling in its minimalism and 2014's Cells looks like it should belong in a prison themed bowling alley somewhere.
Hair Mesh (2013)
Cells (2014)
It's both cute and kooky at the same time as being harsh and vaguely unsettling. In the same way a summer day has us down the park, eating ice cream, and smiling more while at the same time reminding us that the planet is being destroyed at an alarming rate. So perhaps it was apt that the last thing at the White Cube that really caught my eye was 2018's Hot Spot (stand).
As I've established - I really like maps and globes. That's the main reason I liked it. Mona Hatoum would, one imagines, claim a deeper though far from concrete meaning for this exhibit's existence but I just thought it looked cool. If Mona Hatoum was to visit a Mona Hatoum exhibition with me it seems likely we'd both enjoy it - but for very different reasons. I also suspect she'd think I was an idiot of the highest order. Perhaps I am.
Hot Spot (stand) (2018)
No comments:
Post a Comment