Spotted

Here are a few things I've done recently that you might also like to try, and one that you won't be able to, so hard cheese.

If you find yourself in London you might like to idle a few hours away on the South Bank. Start with David Shrigley's "Brain Activity" exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which runs for another couple of weeks. This collection of oddball, spiky line-drawings ("killed for wearing shorts!" is the caption under a scrawling of one stick figure decapitating another), bizarre looped animations (see  how long you can last in the 'Headless Drummer' room), and unsettling installations ("I'm dead", reads the sign held aloft by a stuffed Jack Russell pup) all add up to a playful, irreverent, silly and sometimes savage exhibition, and one of a handful I've been to punctuated by regular outbursts of spontaneous, helpless laughter as one or other of Shrigley's sly little observations strikes a particular chord with one or other of its visitors. I've never met David Shrigley but I imagine everyone has a mate a little bit like him; the one you're really fond of but are never quite sure about inviting to a party, because "he doesn't half come out with some weird stuff sometimes". Being surrounded by so many other attendees who were giggling like naughty kids at his questionable taste and twisted wit was a huge tonic, and I came out smiling like a fool.

I also had a slightly half-hearted whizz around the accompanying exhibition, Jeremy Deller's Joy in People, but found it harder to engage with. Deller's doesn't draw or sculpt, so if multimedia installations are your particular kick there may be much to detain you here, but personally I found the reconstruction of his teenage bedroom and the mockup of a local greasy spoon cafe (where smart London gallery-goers could actually sit, and actually drink a mug of actual tea) a bit trite. A man of his time (the 80s and 90s), he's  famous for having staged a reconstruction of the Battle of Orgreave, where striking miners clashed violently with the police (deployed by the government of the day* in a particularly quasi-militaristic fashion.). The film of the reconstruction was included as part of the exhibition, and what I hadn't realised about it was that some of the original Orgreave strikers and coppers took part, effectively 'playing' their younger selves. Their inclusion, voluntary though it was, made me quite uneasy as it added a troublingly voyeuristic element to the film - you couldn't help but wonder if taking part in a re-enactment would resurrect all the old memories, and re-ignite long-suppressed rage and resentment. Faced with a sighting of the 'old enemy', would they forget this was a mere re-eneactment and actually start laying into one another again like it was 1984, and all while Deller's cameras were running? It seemed opportunistic and exploitative, and I didn't want to be part of that so I headed off midway through the film. Call me a philistine if you like, I don't care.

I headed from there straight along to Tate Modern for the main act, Yayoi Kusama's exhibition. There is a lot to see here, as Kusama is now in her eighties and has been a prolific, driven artist since she was a child. It would be fair to say she's packed a lot in, even as a woman who has been living voluntarily in a psychiatric clinic for over twenty years. Born into a wealthy bourgeois Japanese family, she was expected to conform to the cultural stereotype, and put away her paints to concentrate on acquiring and pleasing a husband. Of course she did no such thing and ran away to New York, where she and the emerging avant-guarde 60s counterculture met one another head-on. Always psychologically fragile, her vast obsessively-worked 'Infinity Net' canvasses seem like some kind of visual attempt to impose order and self-soothe while she effectively emptied the contents of her head (fear/obsession with phalluses (her father was a serial shagger) visual/emotional disorientation, lysergic distortion of the physical) into her work. Some of her installations - a rowing boat packed with willies, a room bristling with more willies, a repeating loop of a filmed 60s orgy featuring, well, willies being tenderly daubed with paint by flower children) may grate after a while, but others are incredibly beautiful, disquieting, and striking. I could have stayed forever in the Infinity Room with its labyrinth of mirrors and shifting lights, although I could also see that for someone in a more fragile state (like Kusama herself), the visual distortions and disorientation could feel far more menacing. This is definitely a woman who has lived for her art, at some great personal cost. Do get down to Tate Modern if you can, and see for yourself.

So those are the things I've done that you could perhaps do too. I've also been to see Killing Joke again, and sadly their short tour is finished now so you won't be able to. However all is not lost as they seem to be around again here and there later in the summer - if you like a bit of reliable, perfectly delivered noise from four old geezers who've been dishing it out expertly for three decades, they won't let you down. I'm pleased to say it was the first gig for years I've attended where I've gone 'down the front'. It was just too good to stay at the back. My only slight sadness was the surprising omission of top anthem 'Follow the Leaders' from what was otherwise a blistering set - and it set me worrying that Big Paul, one of the best rock drummers EVER, might now struggle with the relentless demands of that particular song. Anyway, I wanted to give them an honourable mention, as I realised that the first time I saw them was in 1981, which really was over three decades ago. I wonder if I'm ever going to develop a taste for subtlety now?

*Thatcher




©KolleyKibber 2012