New art space WORK opens with Bob & Roberta Smith exploring ideas around AV. Daniel Barnes reports.
WORK, a new gallery and multi-disciplinary space by Black Dog Publishing, opens with an impassioned celebration of democracy by Bob & Roberta Smith. The show, ‘You Should be in Charge’, consists of the familiar range of brightly painted signs, proclaiming solidarity and announcing a call to arms in the name of democratic engagement.
Bob & Roberta Smith is well known for his heady mixture of sardonic wit and serious political concern. His works possess both a lightness of humour and a depth of conviction that places them firmly in the camp of art directed towards social change, if not sometimes revolution. The background for this show is provided by the impending referendum, and at times it feels more like a campaign trail than an art show as you weave your way through the seemingly relentless barrage of signs.
The campaign here is motivated by deep dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, which breeds a cautious hope of improvement. As well as dealing with the current debate about proportional representation, the exhibition explores historical movements as if to suggest how we might learn from them. One sign after another, British politics is dissected and analysed in an attempt to identify and communicate the core of the problem, which Smiths seems to think is the fact that we're governed by idiots.
The message in this exhibition is urgent, but the playful use of colour and the home-made style of sign-writing prevents the work from feeling preachy or clumsy. Indeed, it is the informal, light-hearted nature of the medium that lends the message its vigour: the garish colours and sense that the signs are hurriedly produced creates an irresistible immediacy. The thing that fascinates me most is the notion that there is a much deeper, more expressive, level of meaning communicated through symbolism beyond the banality of mere words. Sometimes it seems as if the colours are there to emphasise the words, admitting that – in desperate times – words are not enough. For example, in I Wish I Could Have Voted for Barak Obama, the words ‘voted for’ have a blue background, denoting the Democrat Party, and ‘Barak Obama’ is, at the edge of impropriety, on a brown background.
Smith's work always treads a thin line between art and politics, aesthetics and ideas, the medium and the message, which is again demonstrated by ‘You Should be in Charge’. The show is certainly timely in its ideas, but there is something disposable about the works, for they have limited aesthetic merit beyond the vivacity of their contemporary relevance. This, however, is a virtue, for Smith is an artist of ideas and not precious objects. The immediacy of the message and the transitory nature of the medium reminds us that art matters, not just as an idle pastime, but as also as an instrument of change.
You Should Be In Charge is at WORK until 3rd June 2011.
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