GSK Contemporary

GSK Contemporary

04 November, 2008
by: SUSIE

BAR INSTALLATION VIDEO THEATRE SCULPTURE MUSIC SOUND PAINTING PERFORMANCE LIVE FILM RESTAURANT.

Angular, neon text announces the Royal Academy of Arts' GSK Contemporary season at the recently acquired 6 Burlington Gardens. 'It's like they've just discovered East London… about ten years too late,' as one wise Culture Editor put it.

You can't help thinking that at some point in the past year, Charles Saumarez Smith – now secretary and chief executive of London's Royal Academy of Arts – called a meeting to try to work out what was hip with the kids. Amid murmurs of dissent and nostalgia for the good old days of landscapes in oil and a healthy disregard for female artists, 'So, NEON, yah?' Trixabel the unpaid intern pipes up. 'Art that's impossible to sell?' ventures someone else, remembering that it had been pretty damn cutting-edge back in the '60s. The inspiration continues to flow with branding like 'RA Forum Unplugged'. Hmm.

Here are the facts: East London and Berlin are cool; the RA is not. Contemporary art is cool; GlaxoSmithKline is not. This unsettling partnership makes me feel like the day I found a Bowie T-shirt for sale in Next… a little bit sick.

This aside, the howls of despair that threatened to drown out curator David Thorp's introductory tour of GSK Contemporary emanated only from Swiss artist Rémy Markowitsch's economically relevant Onion Options, not from the ladies and gentlemen of the press. For, though sorely lacking in a graspable curatorial vision or theme, there is some great work on show here.
 

Julian Rosefeldt, The Perfectionist (Trilogy of Failure / Part III) 2005 3-channel film installation filmed on Super-16mm transferred onto DVD 16:9 loop 25 min 18 sec

Julian Rosefeldt is represented by some of the most engaging video work I have ever seen; Maya Roos' OS9 fingerprint of Malcolm Mclaren has wit and style; Olaf Nicolai's theatrical pole-dancing light combines drama and menace; and I'm witness to René Pollesch's Tod Eines Praktikanten (Death of a Trainee) which inspires hearty debate. The tattered ruins of this particular performance remain in the gallery as an installation. Similarly, at the top of the grand staircase, all that remains of Georgina Starr's classical female nudes are their shattered shells swept to one side amid a room of empty pedestals. These days, we have become masters of documenting events and, rather like that morbid fascination with other people's photographs on Facebook, the overarching feeling on encounter is that you've missed a hell of a party.

But fear not! You have time to learn from this bitter sensation because this is only the beginning of Part 1: Molten States, which will run until 7 December when Part 2: Collision Course takes over until 19 January, and there's an enormous array of events planned (and hopefully even some unplanned ones too).

Where GSK contemporary might be able to succeed is as a venue, rather than as a cohesive exhibition. Trendy restaurant Bistrotheque have set up shop as FLASH, while South London artist-curators temporary contemporary are presiding over Event Horizon – a performance and social space. I've often pondered the strange relationship between art and art gallery wall - it's really rather arbitrary and often very uninspiring. Here is a place where you could spend many happy hours in comfort. The old Academy Rooms, now home to collective project agrifashionista.tv, are particularly inviting; a cosy library of sorts in which to explore art works and their workings.

I think Adam Sutherland (Agrifashionista Director) sums things up nicely: 'Well it's going to be a god awful mess – I promise – but that's the point, a mess of material, projects presented and viewed from multiple angles, kind of all represented at once, different parts of the art world and the real world.'

GSK Contemporary continues until 19.01.09

Click here to see what else is on at the Royal Academy.

Spoonfed is an events listing website that covers everything in London. Click here to see all London art exhibitions in the coming weeks.

SUSIE