Domestic Appliance at Flowers East

Domestic Appliance at Flowers East

04 August, 2008
by: Claireflan

Flowers East's well-intended effort to bring kinetic art out of its closet brings delight to all of us out there who harbour an inclination towards the inanity of life. Bringing Oscar Wilde's famed maxim 'all art is quite useless' to the table, the artists' contributions to Domestic Appliance take domestic objects, inextricably associated with utility, and subvert this utility often beyond the point of being useless to being downright destructive.

Whereas the underwriting attribute of aesthetic beauty was traditionally the sublime, Domestic Appliance and the metamechanical art it celebrates gives us the ridiculous. A deceptively ordinary wooden chair systematically explodes and reassembles itself, a strangely cute, (yet somewhat disturbing), mechanical ostrich made out of mock human hands ambles to and fro, and a shower head gesticulates in imitation of a jelly fish. These are just three examples of the thirty odd transformed, souped up, wackified assemblages that confront us with anti-art and ultimately the crux of Dadaism.

The exhibition purports to contest the dismissive attitude towards kinetic art of the 1960s, which according to Yves-Alain Bois 'suffered the unhappy fate of a flash in the pan'. It is true that kinetic art has been more or less written off the art historical map or at least relegated to the obligatory acknowledgment before moving on with the serious stuff. However, the status of the weirdo, the art historical misfit that defies taxonomy and teleological rationale is absolutely fitting for the anarcho-mechanical art most associated with the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (represented in the show). So, why commission a show like Domestic Appliance now, almost 50 years after its heyday, or only day? Perhaps the gang at Flowers East were bored, perhaps it was the silly season's unofficial inauguration or perhaps they simply thought 'why not?'.

The only concern is that while a show like this works exceptionally well during the merriment and mischief of the preview, it will undoubtedly be less well received by the lone gallery goer who has neither a fellow body to nudge with delight nor any background clamour to muffle the absurd noises all around him or her. The only solution is for children (or unashamedly childish people) all over London to make haste to the Kingsland Road gallery and help this celebration of nonsense make a little more sense. This is a call to action: spread the word.

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Claireflan