The Future Can Wait / Kounter Kulture / New Sensations

The Future Can Wait / Kounter Kulture / New Sensations

16 October, 2008
by: Art Sleuth

This review comes courtesy of Spoonfed's London culture pal, Art Sleuth.

The Old Truman Brewery's triple art fair extravaganza: Kounter Kulture, New Sensations and The Future Can Wait is most definitely worth a visit and more so as they are all exactly zero pounds entry.

The Future Can Wait stands out as being something special due to the diversity of content and the vast warehouse setting lending the perfect space for mind-bending installations.

You are greeted by a huge statue of Bert from Sesame Street (by Christopher Davies) rotating continuously, creating what can only be described as a perpetual mono-brow. Genius.

Janak Odedra's clever Project KA is an assemblage of found car-parts recreated into the shape of a car. The parts now defunct from commercial purpose are transformed into useful objects of artistic purpose.

Aisling Hedgecock is another artist who uses human debris as a material for her work. Saracen is a group of hefty structures made up of mini polystyrene balls which now resemble a futuristic coral reef. Their appeal is their transient state: unlike Project KA their form is not fully complete It's a live organism.

Licking Dogs by Angela Bartram is beyond the bizarre, but apparently not beyond the realms of contemporary art, as it is a video of a woman snogging a dog. Snogging; defined by full tongue on tongue action. The dog, it must be said, is now probably very confused about human interrelations.

Among other gems are Andrea Gregson's 'Borrower-sized' fantasy worlds. Peep through wooden boxes taken from her Headspace and Wonderland exhibition in 2006. Also Kim Rugg's intricate collages made from the front page of The Guardian. Each letter down to the very smallest type has been painstakingly cut and re-arranged so that they are in alphabetical order and stuck back on the page.

And Gordon Cheung's enormous triptych, Death Cuts Full 1 with his signature background made from stock listings, draws you into a fantasy landscape of trippy perspective.


Gordon Cheung, 'Death Cuts Full I', stock listings, acrylic gel & spray on canvas, 2008

Kounter Kulture centers on themes of sub-culture; heavily concentrating on the 'Street Art' genre, kitsch, cartoon and pop art legacy, print and graphic design trends.

Pieces from old favourites such as Eine put up a minor appearance alongside the main body of less established artists, there also a few pieces being flogged from high ranking artists such as a David Hockey print and a spot painting print signed by Damien Hirst going for around 25k. Probably the most highly priced art work in the whole fair.

Will Tuck, is exhibiting a very Koons-esque series of oil paintings, smoothly painted to the point of giving the impression of lamination. They consist of porn-star women recreating Bottichellian style scenes. Questioning how the original paintings might have been received in the Renaissance by some, along with presenting a merge of high art with newsagent top-shelf literature. Interesting, but perhaps something not particularly ground-breaking.

Snuck into a corner are Laurie Hodgekin's Vanitas paintings of evil technicolour monkeys, intricately painted so each hair on the monkeys has a spiky realism. Although small paintings, these are significant as they push against the mainstream with their heavy gold frames, Dutch master painting style and warped Gremlin figures.

Stephen Dryden's, Undo and What About My Mother are rather more removed from the central theme of the fair. They are faceless figures made out of woollen threads which unravel past the shoulder into a woollen mess, as if they are melting into the floor. Very Antony Gormely in a fresh and inspiring way.

Works from Stuart Semple and Nathan James including paintings from the MASH UPS exhibition are also present. And Wang Zhi Jie series of Little Girls portraits with blown up heads and popsicle colours twist the Manga genre.

Unfortunately 4 New Sensations, an art competition in collaboration with Channel 4 is not entirely sensational, but at least shows the budding possibilities of fresh-out-of-college artists. Which is the whole point.

Among the four winners, Mark Davey's moving rotary contraptions and the paintings Robert Sherwood stand out. Definitely worth a jaunt.

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Click here to read Spoonfed's Culture Editor's take on Kounter Kulture and The Future Can Wait.

Art Sleuth