Honey, I shrunk the mixed media installations!
There’s a childlike delight in interacting with small objects; dolls houses, trains, boats, model villages, (yes they become a little geeky when you get over the age of 12, but they’re just so comical!). When everyday objects get shrunken down you begin to notice how interesting design is – as the objects become completely unusable they turn into play things, no matter what your age is. It’s just that the grown up part lies in appreciating the detail of them, because detail shows intelligent thought, planning and a nuanced understanding for how we live.
For the time being, forget about large scale art bombarding you at all angles, it's time for some small, classy masterpieces to come forward and entice you with their maturity. Because we are small, at the Cork Street branch of Flowers, shows that small objects have settled into adulthood, and here they're in the guise of tiny, delicate installations.
Like a room full of machines working away, the space is filled with intermittent noises, and it's not clear what sound is coming from where. Looking like neat packages, various small objects are placed carefully around the room. It's as if the place has been booby trapped for your entrance, everything beeping away and ready to be conducted. There's something clinical, almost hospital-like about the way the objects interact with each other.
How simple to be enticed by a generic metal box with a bright blue shiny button on the front. It’s called Mechanic and it’s by Tim Lewis. Staring at this makes your idle hands scratch, because for some innate reason pressing that button is slightly naughty. It reminds me of toys in plastic packaging with 'try me' signs next to a beaming red button. Well no one's telling me to try this one, but I do anyway and when I do something amazing happens... the box lights up and inside little women start running on a hamster wheel. Yep, you read it right and there’s really no way of giving this work justice with words. It's not on a video screen, and it's not an illustration or an animation, it’s tiny models actually inside the box, running seamlessly. They look like they're made of rubber, moving with such grace that you could be watching real people in there, forced into the labour of running for eternity every time someone gives in and presses the button. They blur around the edges as they run, as if on some sort of mission. Lights strobe as they work and there are circuits and other electronic paraphernalia dotted around in their enclosed atmosphere. When it stops the magic is gone, and you notice that they're still in there – static and lifeless models in the dark. As baffling as this is, it's not until you view Lewis' second piece that you realise how truly astounding this work is.
We are small starts as you stand in front of it, and this time it's men marching round in a circle – their arms are attached to their bodies but they still move them side to side as they walk along. Amazingly it looks as if they're lifting their feet off the conveyor as they walk, and it makes you wonder just how this is happening. The lights flash like the picture of an old silent film. Muybridge’s moving photographic works come to mind, but to me they are more like an animated version of Russian Soviet propaganda art. All the figures are working towards one aim, and doing this as part of a large, well oiled machine. They stride with a purpose just as the running women do and the noise that comes from them sounds like incessant turning as if they’re controlled by a larger machine.
Lewis’ works are hard to beat but the rest of the exhibition keeps up the momentum of a fascinating show. In Betsy Dadd's Peep Hole you must look through a camera lens to see a video of scenes from the sea: birds fly in sequence above vast waves, a sailing boat passes by as someone whistles a merry tune, a blaring sound blasts out when a ship comes by.
Kleio Gizeli’s constructions of tiny rooms are meticulous, tiny picture frames, tiny mugs, tiny...rats. In The Jones’ Prelude; a phone rings as a video plays on a picture frame at the back of the composed room. In each room an old lady sits with a bag close to her chest with her head positioned in odd angles. On the video she looks on as a man's head slides off – it emphasises just how surreal the models are.
Each object reveals itself in a way that means it’s about how you relate to them; they begin to work when you approach, invite you to look into them and make noise to make your concentration waver. So put your toys away children, it's time for the grown-ups to come out and play.
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Image Credits:
Kleio Gizeli, Days of Abundance, 2010, mixed media construction.
Tim Lewis, Mechanic, 2006, mixed media construction.
Kleio Gizeli, The Jones' Prelude, 2009, mixed media construction.
All images courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
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