Gravity Grave:Jeff Wall @ the White Cube.

People fall from trees, they lie in the street, they lie on the grass near their horse, and they lie - looking suicidal - on their kitchen floor beneath a table. There's a room in Bermondsey's White Cube gallery (which is where, earlier today, I went to see Jeff Wall's Life in Pictures retrospective) where the art historian James Fox speaks knowingly about the 78 year old Canadian photographer and artist's penchant for showing people returning to the earth from where they came.

Even graves, and graveyards, crop up fairly regularly and he's got some fairly offbeat themes too - kitchens and cleaning utensils aren't normal fodder for photo art. But Wall is a different kind of photographer. He meticulously plans his images and arranges people to pose for them. Though it's not exactly clear how he managed to capture the boy, above, in full flight as he falls from a tree. A childhood accident Wall wanted to revisit.

Confrontations appear in his art, too. The two guys in suits and dickie bows having a set to or a pair of well to do looking young lads boxing in a front room of a nice tidy house. Most of the works at the White Cube didn't have titles attached (the ones I've added come from their website) but that's not particularly relevant. Surely a photograph is as good as a photograph is whatever it's called.

The little girl lying on the sidewalk on a sunny day in Vancouver is a powerful, ambiguous, image as is the one of a young woman standing up and talking on a telephone wearing a white coat. All looks very serious. I'm less impressed with the lady in the sombre looking black dress and her gentleman friend but others seem to start telling stories that we must finish ourselves.

The woman surrounded by, trapped even, her library of books. What's going on there? As for the topless guy on rough ground, he seems to be on the receiving end of some kind of violence but what kind and why? Wall's been doing this kind of stuff for over forty years now so he's learned how to use his (mostly very big) lightbox photographs to tell these stories.

 

Recovery (2017-18)

 

Insomnia (1994)

 

What to leave in and what to leave out. Recovery looks an outlier at first as it's a photo of a painting but you soon notice that one of the faces is that of a real man. What's he doing there? Insomnia is the photo of the suicidal looking man even if the title suggests a different diagnosis. What of the man surrounded by lightbulbs? I overheard fellow gallery visitors suggesting his wife would be pretty pissed off with the amount of electricity he's using up. It costs money, you know.

 

Wall looks at life's little, and sometimes big, moments with an eye for detail and an eye for the curious. There are some works at the White Cube that are so big I couldn't get a decent photo of them (so they're not included here) and there are some black and white photos too which aren't included in here because I didn't really like them. I'm on a downer when it comes to black and white photography at the moment. I can't see the point of it when colour is so much better - and truer. It's like listening to records in mono.

 

Mimic (1982)

 

There's a woman coming down some stairs, a cleaner in a fancy Frank Lloyd Wright style house, and a load of people hanging around outside a nightclub. None of them particularly life changing or memorable moments but all very much part of the rich tapestry of life and all rendered as beautiful by Wall.

 

Then there's Mimic, a recreation of an ugly racist incident that Wall witnessed on the streets of his hometown Vancouver many years ago. The Flooded Grave, with its starfish and everything, plugs right into what seems to be Wall's obsession with death (mind you, who's not obsessed with death? It comes to us all, it's the one certainty) although I prefer the thoughtful man perched high above a Canadian city (Toronto perhaps?) pondering something. Mortality? Affairs of the heart? Work? What to have for dinner? Who knows.

 

The Flooded Grave (1998-2000)

In the Legion (2022)

 

Bands play, people do improbable aerobics in legion bars, somebody falls off a horse, people go for a walk in the desert, girls play in the river, somebody sits under what looks like a motorway bridge, a heavily tattooed man in a Charles Bukowski t-shirt reads a book on a sunny day, and there are some very dirty kitchens.

 

Oh, and there's a giant naked woman in some sort of library complex. Because .... why not? It's known that Wall spends a long time using technology to alter and define his photographs but I'm still not sure if that giant naked lady is some kind of Duane Hanson artwork or if it's a normal size naked lady that Wall has increased in size to give the image an uncanny edge.

 

The Giant (1992)

 

The Sicilian lady standing by a wall in her native island is a reference to a classic Italian film (one I can't bloody remember now (!) and one that was also pastiched by The White Lotus) and that's very much the kind of thing Wall gets up to. Returning to the aforementioned video, Fox talks about how some of Wall's paintings are inspired by artists like Manet, Goya, and Delacroix.

Though, to be honest, I couldn't get it from my visit to the White Cube. I liked (almost) all of Wall's photographs though from a young woman meditating, or just relaxing, on what appears to be the roof of a car to a group of people hanging around outside a theatre showing a play, or film, with Glenda Jackson in. All life, it seems, is in Jeff Wall's work and it's not so much as if he's raging about gravity and the grave, so much as he's celebrating our (hopefully) long journey towards it with all the bumps in the road that every journey will inevitably have. I'm glad I went (and I also enjoyed my pie and mash in Manze's on Tower Bridge Road beforehand too).

Theatre night:By Their Fruits.

Man, the audience at Theatre503 were getting into it last night. A mostly young and black crowd roared with laughter, shouted instructions to the performers, and chatted amongst themselves during the minimal yet expansive By Their Fruits (written and directed by the 'interdisciplinary' artist dkfash). Strangely, none of this detracted from my enjoyment of the play which, for me, was good. If not quite as great as some of my fellow theatre goers seemed to think.

I say 'play' but perhaps the word 'interdisciplinary' is a bigger clue as to what's going on down in Battersea. By Their Fruits IS a play, primarily, but it also incorporates dance, sound, and light to make for quite an astonishing visual spectacle. The two performers, Ivan Oyik and Reba Ayi-Sobsa, are hugely impressive. Both in getting emotion across and in their movement. The fact they both look amazing helps too when you're watching them for nearly two hours.

Him and Her (they're not given names) are a married couple who met when his mum had an affair with her dad. Sometimes they're happily married (not least when she offers to sit on his face) and sometimes they're unhappily married (when one of them comes home late or seems to be showing more interest in fellow workers) and these shifts can often take place in less than a second.

He leans in to her for what seems like a guaranteed kiss only to be spurned, and heavily critiqued, at the last moment. She speaks in poetry that would probably be very annoying in real life but works in the theatrical context, he's a little more prosaic but still turns a fair few decent lines. The audience, however, provided the best line of the night. When a very vigorous and passionate sexual workout (performed in the style of interpretative dance, naturally) came to an end a woman in the row behind me shouted out, to much amusement, a simple instruction:- "continue".

Oh, how we laughed. But there were funny lines in By Their Fruits too - as well as moving ones as the production tackled heavy themes of gender balance, abortion, mental health, and control. My only criticism is that I felt a little removed, lacking emotional investment, with a drama that probably should have had me leaning much deeper into it. The rest of the crowd didn't have that problem whereas I enjoyed By Their Fruits but had reservations. Much like the sometimes loving, sometimes sparring couple on stage had about each other. Continue.

The Hum Is Coming To Her:The Listeners.

"I couldn't image how life could unravel so completely. It was so small and innocuous, such a barely perceptible sound" - Claire.

41 year old Claire (Rebecca Hall) leads what appears to be a happy, normal, life. A English teacher living in a pleasant house in a quiet cul-de-sac with her husband Paul (Prasanna Puwaranajah) and teenage daughter Ashley (Mia Tharia). Her life is turned upside down when she starts hearing a buzzing, droning, humming noise which nobody else can hear - and having nosebleeds to boot.

She can't, for the life of her, work out where it's coming from and nobody else, her husband, her daughter, her colleagues/friends, can hear it. In The Listeners (BBC1/iPlayer, written by Jordan Tannahill and directed by Janicza Bravo), we follow Claire on her tense and chilling journey into the source of that hum and what it all means. It's not, as a doctor suggests, anxiety, stress, menopause, or perimenopause. Claire is absolutely certain of that.

The trouble is, nobody else seems to (fully) believe her. Ashley starts to think Claire needs help and the situation puts huge amounts of stress on her marriage to Paul as well. When Claire discovers that one of her students, Kyle (Ollie West), also hears the constant hum she has an ally but when Kyle suggests they investigate together, Claire is wary. She's a teacher. he's one of her students (and one who is rumoured to like sharing weird location dick pics on WhatsApp), the ethical problems are obvious.

She joins him anyway and soon they find themselves attending a meeting with a select, and very disparate, group of others who can hear the hum and want answers. Hosted by Omar (Amr Waked) and his partner Jo (Gayle Rankin), the group include Teresa (Lucy Sheen), Seema (Shreya M.Patel), Tom (Ian Mercer), Emily (Karen Henthorn), and the hot-headed, if seemingly well meaning, Damian (Samuel Edward-Cook).

Some of them have been 'listening' for years, Omar for decades. Some, like Omar, accept living with it. Others, like Claire, want it gone. The group eat together, they clean together, they breathe together, and they 'listen' together. They look, to all intents and purposes, like a cult but are they a cult? If they are a cult then what do they want? And how does any of this explain the apparently very real presence of the hum?

In order to find out, Claire and Kyle thrust themselves (willingly) into a world of decibel readings, 5G masts, pylons (and lots of 'em), wind turbines, tin foil hats, observatories (Jodrell Bank makes a brief guest appearance), 'deep state' conspiracy theories, and discussions about Schumann resonances. Much of it at the behest of the deeply suspicious, and ice cold placid, Omar.

Claire risks losing her job, she falls out with her best friend Cassandra (Franc Ashman), she undergoes counselling with Dr Broodthaers (Kiruna Stamell), and she ends up at the fierce end of Kyle's mum (Siobhan, played by Niamh McCann) understandable anger and concern. What happens to the family garage door is best left for the viewer to discover.

With a Devonte Hynes soundtrack which goes from the classic folk of Nick Drake and Richard & Linda Thompson to a spooky cover of Opus III's It's A Fine Day, and references to Georges Bataille and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it's a bit more hi-falutin' than your average BBC1 drama and it's so artfully shot it's more like watching a film than it is a TV show. Though whether or not that's a horror film or an arthouse film you'll have to make your own decision. The Listeners is a powerful, moving, and compelling drama and it's one the makes you think. For that it should be applauded. Life, it seems, can unravel completely from something that is small and innocuous.

Shrouded In Your Clothes:Charles Lutyens @ the Bethlem Museum of the Mind.

"I love you, you carriers of souls, you sufferers in the dark, you sufferers in the light. Your pass me by shrouded in your clothes" - Charles Lutyens

 

 Psychogeriatric Ward (c.1975)

"It is life - that is, 'being in the world' - that I am engaged with, observe, and from which I draw" once wrote Charles Lutyens (1933-2021), the artist, art therapist, and great nephew of the celebrated architect Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens' (Charles) best known works, though both unknown to me until recently and I've still not seen either, are Angels of the Heavenly Host in St Paul's Church on Bow Common (the UK's largest single artist mosaic) and Outraged Christ (a 15 foot crucific) in Liverpool Cathedral.

At the Bethlem Museum of the Mind near Beckenham they've just ended a show, A World Apart, about his art (and his art therapy) and on Saturday I braved the wet and windy conditions and went to have a gander. It was a small show but it was worth a look (and the museum itself is worth a visit too -I've added a small number of supplementary photos to the end of this blog so you can get a feel for what it's like). 

In his role as art therapist, Lutyens had access to a hidden world of 1970s/1980s psychiatric hospitals, a time when such places were far more stigmatised than they are now. On the bus from the town of Basingstoke to my home of Tadley we'd pass by Park Prewett mental hospital and quite often comments would go along the line of "it's your stop, isn't it?".

Yet many people had no idea what these places were really like. Lutyens did and perhaps that's why his work is so sympathetic/empathetic. Anywhere you visit you get to see the people there as individuals and as humans and, of course, mental hospitals are no different.

Lutyens himself had trained at Chelsea, Slade, and St.Martin's in London and briefly in Paris too but the art therapy work began in Oxfordshire in the seventies. We're not told why but we are informed, and we can see for ourselves, that Lutyens wasn't solely interested in the day to day workings of these places (though he was interested in that) but in the emotions and feelings of the people who spent their lives, or some of their lives, there.

Self-Portrait as a Young Man (1956)

Including himself. Lutyens, looking very serious and taking it all in here, believed that "the images we create are the outer form of our inner experience". As with a watercolour of a young boy from the same decade, we see how Lutyens liked to focus on people's expressions, often thoughtful ones. Or, in the case of an untitled figure, isolation and loneliness. Two things you can image there being a lot of in this particular environment.

 

When He Could See (c.1950s)

 

Untitled (Solitary Figure) (c.1960s)

 

The Group (c.1965)

Not always though. Lutyens painted group therapy sessions where people were encouraged to come together and share their experiences with the aim of helping themselves and each other. Even if Lutyens himself appears to be hovering above, rather than part of, the group.

There's an altogether different 'group' in The Betrayal/The Marked One. A ghostly spectre (is there any other kind?) and a dark, barely there, character who seems to merge into the background. There seems to be some sort of Christian meaning here which I'm unable to read but I like it as a painting anyway. To be honest, Christian 'morality' would probably ruin it.

 

The Betrayal/The Marked One (c.1968)

 

The Coin (c.1969)

 

The Maggot (c.1968)

 

Lutyens, himself, felt the pains of life. Following a divorce and the loss of contact with a child, he started to see himself as a 'maggot' (see above) and at one point was so 'diminished' he could only make important decisions by tossing a coin. Even The Dice Man gives you more options than that.

 

He was also traumatised, permanently it seems, by the memory of his mother having had part of her arm surgically removed and, even more so, her spurning his attempts to help her. You can see it all in the below painting, the mother's independent expression, the son's 'woebegone' features, and the vertical/physical division down the centre reflecting the mental division between the two of them.

 

Son with Mother/Amputation of the Left Forequarter (c.1975)

 

Loss (c.1985)

 

Corridor Encounter (c.1965)

 

Corridor Encounter looks like something out of Francis Bacon's nightmares, Old Woman in Chair has a hint of Paula Rego about it, and another Loss painting juxtaposes its bright pastel shades by having the sitter look as if she is an absolute turmoil.

 

Then there's some riffing on Edvard Munch. Lutyens had been told his work was reminiscent of the Norwegian master (and, to be fair, I can see it in places) and The Scream is a playful tribute to Munch's most famous painting. Though not sure what The Siblings is all about.

 

Old Woman in Chair (c.1975)

 

Loss in Pastels (c.1985)

 

The Scream (undated)

 

The Siblings (undated)

 

The Door (undated)

Another big name crops up in the form of Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that there were competing centres of gravity within the human psyche:- the id (telling us what we want), the superego (internalising societal rules and morals), and the ego which mediates between the two. In Lutyens' The Door the id is believed to be represented by the impulsive dog but it's unclear who the other three characters, not least the slightly horror like figure lurking behind the door, are supposed to be.

Looks cool even if it's unclear. Maybe the guy behind the door is the same dude who 'rises out of the chair' in the below painting from 1965. He looks quite cross and his chair looks a bit like Van Gogh's famous one if we're in the business of art historic references.

 

Rise out of the Chair (c.1965)

 

A Couple in Two Rooms (c.1971)

 

Lutyens wasn''t the first whose art came from asylums and the like. Alongside the Victorian painter Richard Dadd (whose work me and my friend's used for a poster for our psychedelic night Cuthbert's Morning Off) there was, some time later, the Danish artist Louis Marcussen (1894-1985) who called himself Overtaci, "uber-patient" - he did spend fifty-six years in the Danish mental health system, who has an entire museum in Aarhus devoted to his fantastic visions. 

 

One of his works has been included here. It only just fits in the remit of the exhibition but it's pretty good.You can definitely see a bit of Hieronymous Bosch in it - though Overtaci cited Leonardo da Vinci as his chief influence. He signed it Louis Concales just to chuck a third name into the mix. Then I'll leave you with The Siren (one of Lutyens' works that does look like a Munch) and some general images of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Go along. It's worth a look.

 

Overtaci - Untitled (undated)

 

The Siren (undated)