review - ghosts move about me patched with histories

On Wednesday afternoon I had a brief preview of some aspects of Philip Davenport and Nicola Smith's exhibition Ghosts move about me patched with histories in the Chinese Arts Centre's Whisper residency space.

On Thursday I was back there for the artists talks, the exhibition opening and Nicola's performance. I think her final performance was earlier today. The exhibition itself is only open until Friday next week (17 December) so I recommend you get to see it while you can.

Both artists were in residency in the 501 space in Chongqing, Phil in November and December 2009, Nicola in January and February this year (2010). Phil's blog of his residency can be found here, Nicola's blog of her residency can be found here. Nina Chua and Jessica Longmore who I believe return from their residency in the same space this weekend have blogged their experiences here.

Nicola's artists talk was first. Due to the nature of her practice she had less in the way of physical objects to show for the experience. Instead she talked about her preparation, how she approached creating work for residency, and about the end of her time in Chongqing using supporting material from her laptop and online.

Her approach on arrival was to carry out an action almost immediately. This was washing a bench outside a shopping mall close to the studio. The images of this action set off a lot of associations for me. The bench was red, which I understand to be traditionally a lucky colour. The state of the uncleaned sections of bench echoed a recurrent theme in Nina and Jessica's blog of the levels of pollution in Chongqing.

Back to the colour, red of course occurs in the work of many artists but I was specifically reminded of my friends Jennifer McDonald (shortly to be in residence at the Gowry Art Institute in south India) where it is used for its religious associations and in reference to (and sometimes in the form of) menstrual blood, and Louise Woodcock, again for its menstrual and religious associations and more general visceral physical associations. But these are personal responses.

Phil's talk was different and more discursive. He had large text pieces in English and Chinese made during the residency in collaboration with Chinese artists. Some of which are shown in the first and final images 'borrowed' for this post.

One of the themes that came through very strongly in Phil's talk (and more widely in the exhibition as a whole) was a sense of how disorienting it is to be placed in an alien culture without the language or reference points to make sense of it.

I thought the bilingual text pieces were fascinating and worth investigating further. A poem that came out of this residency and the collision of languages and texts, My Paintings Are Invisible, features in the second anthology from The Other Room. Declaration of interest - this anthology comes with a CD of two of my soundworks.

The exhibition itself comprises an intense snapshot of the experience of being in the vigorous and alien environment of Chongqing. The space is arranged almost like a domestic living room. As you enter a settee in front of you faces a television against the opposite wall. The wall to your left is covered with a textually dense poem in the form of a spreadsheet repeated several times. Clockwise from the television a door in the otherwise bare wall facing you is also covered with the same wallpaper. A dress similar to one being worn by the presenter on the snippet of a Chinese programme playing on a loop on the television hangs on the door. Past the door there is a small table, topped with the same poem, on which there is a tea set consisting of four tiny cups and a small teapot. Finally on this wall a projector casts an image on the facing wall. The wall to your right is undecorated but in the windows outside there was funerary money. The remaining wall is the wall on which the projector casts its image. This was a film of Nicola rehearsing her performance in the empty space. Continuing our clockwise tour the steps to an upper space are next followed at least for the initial performance by a small cage with two chickens, who were free to wander but evidently found the space too crowded with people for comfort.

The snippet of Chinese television is from a New Year programme and shows a man demonstrating illusions with coins and a glass-topped table. An English translation delivered by an inexpressive speech synthesis programme replaces the Mandarin. A screen-grab from close to the end of the loop is the upper part of the image below. The lower part is from the projected video of Nicola's rehearsal.

I would contrast the performance with the one Yingmei Duan did with David Hancock during her residency in the same space in November last year. Not in terms of quality, I loved both, but in terms of how the space felt and the general emotional mood.

During Yingmei and David's performance the space felt much sparer and Yingmei was a powerful transfixing single point of focus. There was a melancholy and hallucinatory quality to the performance. Nicola had to operate within a more crowded space with more points of focus even before the twenty-five or so extra people were packed in.

The performance in fact began outside the space when we were handed either funerary money or a gold coloured envelope and then divided into two groups according to what we'd been given. The larger group with the paper money were led first into the space through the main entrance after the smaller group with gold envelopes were lined up outside. Those with gold envelopes were then led into the space through the side entrance. Once everyone was in the space Nicola began the next stage of her performance.

After welcoming everyone to the space and offering tea, of which there was only enough to serve one person Nicola changed from her tour-guide uniform into the dress hung on the door using the world's smallest screen for utterly ineffective privacy. Then with an earpiece attached to a tiny mp3 player clipped to the bottom of her dress she danced to a song only she could hear.

After this people with paper money were moved away from the settee and those with gold envelopes were allowed to sit. The video of the illusionist had the volume turned up and attention was turned to the tv for a while. Nicola then climbed the steps to the upper space where she lit candles before climbing back down and leaving the space. The 'guests' were now free to wander round the space, look at the different elements of the exhibition, talk, or even leave.

The evening was not quite complete yet. A little later Phil gathered the funerary money which was burned in a bowl outside the gallery and stepped over as it burned. This is a tradition I believe intended to ensure the money causes no bad luck.

There were several reactions to all this going on in my mind. There were elements of humour - much of Nicola's role play, whether it be her role as hostess or her almost childlike dancing - the presence of chickens in the space - the tv illusionist. There were ideas of wealth and inequality - the money - the preferential treatment of those with the golden envelopes - ideas which were also present in Phil's text adorning the wall. There was as already mentioned a sense of being lost without a map in an alien environment. Appropriately as Phil mentioned in his artists talk that city maps rapidly go out of date in Chongqing such is the rate of development. A rate of development that removed at least one of the buildings he used for navigation during his stay.

Lately Shakespeare's The Tempest seems to have a quote for any situation - perhaps because I recently watched Jarman's version of it again. Ariel's song from Act I perhaps covers some of my reaction to the exhibition:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Loss and separation, yet something strangely comic, and the whole of course rich and strange. But above all everything transformed. This is the experience of being in a new and unfamiliar place. You look first through the eyes you've brought from home. They make things more unfamiliar by interpreting what you see through the filter of what you already know. And so both home and the unfamiliar are transformed. Not your father's bones, not coral, but some weird hybrid of the two.

But there's a little more. Something that occurred to me some time after leaving the exhibition in conversation later in the evening. There is also a near reversal whether conscious or accidental of the customary relationship between visual art and text. Whereas in a gallery you expect a visual work to have its accompanying card of explanatory text here the complex and near indigestible presence is the overwhelming wall of Phil's spreadsheet poem. Some of the themes of which were illuminated by the performance and are present in the rest of the objects in the exhibition.

I loved it and don't think anything I've said comes close to telling you what the exhibition's actually 'about' or what the experience is like. This really is something you have to experience for yourself. And please do.