Deep inside the disturbed mind of Charlie Tuesday Gates there lurks something stranger.
A semi-flooded, abandoned warehouse beside the A12 is hardly the most glamorous place to view art. Neither does it satisfy the predictable image conjured when you say "I'm going to an exhibition tonight darling". However. The candlelit Old Alsphatic building in industrial Bow is definitely the most atmospheric setting I have encountered for such an endeavour - and one which fits the dark work of Charlie Tuesday Gates like a kidskin glove.
Charlie Gates buys roadkill off ebay. She scrounges dead animals from farmers, scrapes bird carcasses from country roads. She practices DIY taxidermy using rats and cheap vodka. The work on show tonight – partly because of the darkness and the candlelight illuminating it – has the feel of a gothic museum; the experiments underway at the hand of a mad old scientist with a monocle. The great and the dead juxtaposed, twisted with the natural and the artificial: butterflies, fake flowers, bones, pearls, antlers, dolls and lots of birds. "It's a secret warehouse filled with internal disturbances, surreal sculptures of uncanny, subconscious ramblings," she says.
There is a cheeky, rakish humour running through the show. A fox head with a curly wig, chains swinging from its neck, cackles out from behind a pair of rimmed spectacles like a little old lady. The bird's feet sticking out of its mouth tell a different story. Stay Away From Idiots is the title. A chicken's head with crystals for eyes peers over the keys of an organ, his little claws reaching up to play. He has a ferret's tail instead of a body. His crystal eyes look on to a piece entitled Mind Like A Magpie set in a beautiful, delicate lamp which looks like a glass birdcage. Inside, two magpies pick over the electrics, heads where the bulbs should be. They have a handful of mini disco balls for company, and an egg replaces the third bulb. It appears to be a comment on what we find beautiful. And – as with much of her work – birds are taking over. They seem to have inhabited something old and abandoned, not so much imprisoned by it but dominating it.
The titles are scratched haphazardly on to the floor and walls in chalk. The lyric from a fairly banging Tiga tune gives the title to a winged skull with a stingray framing its crown like a halo and a spine protruding from its jaws. It's not possible to tell what animal he’s been eating – maybe a human. The skull looks decidedly alive, with a mirror winking out from one of his eye sockets. Every Time I Look Into Your Eyes I See The Future is the title. I like the fact that the artist gets inspiration from the dancefloor. I also like the title of another work: Some People Call Them Artists, I Call Them Wankers inspired by a banker and his ill-advised comments.
The collage of items reek of kitsch and death. One of the pieces – The Eyeful Tower – is particularly disturbing/funny: a doll's body with eyes where its genitals should be is wedged atop a model of the Eiffel Tower, a drooping penis made from the top of the melted tower. 'It's like stumbling upon the back door of someone's head, and that person is very strange,' says Charlie. It's dark, tongue-in-cheek, fairly sick and utterly compelling.
Check out her blog for more internal disturbances.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
Add an event