Black and white images of the New York skyline with vague and blurred shapes obscuring the view, lyrics to songs by Rick James and Toto, a fan with multi-coloured ribbons attached to it, the letters ICU repeated in large fonts, frames made up to look like wooden clapperboard homes - perhaps in the Caribbean, and small inset images of a man and a mic and a woman in a red dress.
What could it all mean? If you have any idea please let me know because I left none the wiser than I entered. Alvaro Barrington's Spider the Pig, Pig the Spider exhibition at the South London Gallery was, at least, pleasing on the eye. It was also something that didn't detain me for very long so it was fortunate that it was, also, free and at a location I was able to walk to.
The gist of the show, it took a board on the wall in the corridor you walk down to enter the gallery to tell me, is based on "an idea of a relatively near future in which augmented and virtual reality have evolved to the point that people routinely choose which identity or character to adopt in different social and other situations". A world where our online, and our real, lives are almost completely intertwined.
A bit like they already are, a cynic may add. Barrington was born, in 1983, in Caracas, Venezuela. The son of Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers, he was raised between New York and the Caribbean. So it makes sense that his art should reflect these locations and, in doing so, was rather evocative. But as for the story of augmented reality, it was one I was unable to follow.
I just looked at things, thought they looked interesting, and moved on. It's Barrington's first solo exhibition in London (the South London Gallery has got form with this kind of thing too) so I'd not to want to make any firm decisions about his work except to say I liked it, up to a point, but I didn't really understand. If I hadn't been told he'd replicated the colour scheme of the Barbican's Dubuffet retrospective from earlier this year I'd certainly not have noticed that - and I both went to that show and wrote a rather lengthy assessment of it.
I still don't know why that happened and, for that matter, what's with all the spiders and pigs? When I say what's with all the spiders and the pigs, what I mean is where were they? Where were they hiding? The title of the show suggests there should be at least some pigs and spiders on display in some form and an information panel tells us that we should be able to spot Napoleon from Animal Farm, Anansi the spider from Louise Bourgeois series of sculptures, and no lesser a television star than Peppa Pig herself.
It was to rain quite heavily later that evening. Perhaps Peppa had gone home to change into her wellingtons in preparations for splashing in some muddy puddles. I can't blame her. After a quick pint in the Pelican over the road (and another, just because, in The Grove House Tavern) I did the same. It was certainly wet enough to splash in muddy puddles but I decided against it.
I took the bus. The weather, and a weird sore hand that is already better, occupied my mind far more than Alvaro Barrington's art did. I hope to see more of his work one day. I'm sure it'll look impressive. I just hope that next time I can actually understand it. Or at least see Porky Pig and Itsy Bitsy Spider.
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