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17/10/2006

Getting on mother's nerves

Mother's Tankstation, Dublin

Psychological drama and contemporary drawing. Group show

curated by the artist David Godbold

Over the past few years the art world has witnessed an unprecedented interest in the practice of drawing. There are of course many potential explanations for this curiously anachronistic phenomenon, which seems at odds with the modern digitally dominated world. One of the most compelling arguments (recently offered by an American collector) was that in a post-9/11 world much of the art audience was searching for something urgent and 'meaningful', expressed through the simplest of means most - the human imagination, pen and paper - that directly engaged with 'real' concerns about 'real' and important issues.

Getting on mother's nerves in no way intends to be a survey of contemporary drawing practice, rather it tries to source works in the manner in which an artist might collect other peer group artists' works, simply by feeling an admiration for their draughting or narrative skills or an empathy for their subject matter - and in this instance, both. Getting on mother's nerves is thus structured upon a very personal taxonomic categorization; the curator is fascinated by hovering malevolence, therefore this particular penchant is inflicted upon the show and it's audience.

On a more objective note the artists involved in this project are indicative of an apparent shift in contemporary drawing, as Richard Serra might put it, from verb to noun, from doing to being. The drawings in the show are structured around linguistic or codified narratives, rather than ostensibly being about the act of their own manufacture / creation; as with abstraction, process, 'action' or high conceptual drawings or indeed a traditional or 'academic' relationship to presence and likeness; in terms of observational drawings or 'preparatory drawings / study towards another end. This is of course not a sole truth, as nothing is anything by itself, but rather a notional framework for the selection of works. William Hogarth famously stated that it was more important for the artist to perfect his/her own pictographic language of that which s/he is able to express or communicate, rather than to endlessly struggle with the incommunicable tangle of the 'real' world. If a drawing could be understood to be a depiction of a man hanging from a tree, that's all that really mattered, as if placed side-by-side, the actual emotional experience of a hanging would be so impossibly distinct from its 'representation' that one simply acts as a pictographic cipher for the other, communicating an intellectual understanding, a possibly of a man hanging from a tree.

At the core of Getting on mother's nerves and 'hanging' in the gallery entrance space is an impression of 1638 Rembrandt etching of Eve offering the forbidden apple of knowledge to Adam, who recoils in horror (for some reason there also happens to be an elephant in the background). This physically unflattering image - the bodies are aged and unidealised - is art historically considered to be one of the important early graphic depictions of intense psychological drama, and thus functions as an emotional spring board for all the newer works in the show. All the contemporary artists included in Getting on mother's nerves are selected for there capacity to make drawings that are similarly powerful expressions of ideas, making each piece a sign for something much greater than the actual sum of its actual parts. Numerous examples of this can be cited; Neil Farber's drawing of vampires is of course not a drawing of real vampires, it couldn't be as they are inherently a literary concept. Similarly Raymond Pettibon's image of 'Babe Ruth' does not attempt to resemble Ruth in person, but rather employs the idea of 'Ruth' as a metaphor for a notional idea of pure human enterprise and ambition, and reflects, consequently, upon our own failure to achieve socially imposed goals. Noel McKenna's images of suburban Australia are not illustrations of quaint and nostalgic architecture and topiary, but claustrophobic and dark imagining of a post-colonial hinterland psyche. Likewise Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua find endless graphic equivalences for the paranoia they feel in the political air surrounding them in present day America. Things are not what them seem, just below the paper surface lays the true nature of these works, the codified signifiers of the inner psychological dramas of the artists. Read them and weep.

Getting on mother’s nerves proposes to include the work of: Nayland Blake (courtesy Fred, London) Jesse Bercowetz & Matt Bua (Courtesy the artists) Adam Dant (courtesy Hales Gallery), Gary Coyle (courtesy Kevin Kavanagh Galley), Marcel Dzama (Courtesy mother’s own), Simon English (courtesy Fred, London), Simon Evans (Courtesy Jack Hanley Gallery) Neil Farber (Courtesy mother’s own), Chris Johanson (Courtesy Jack Hanley Gallery) Atshushi Kaga (Courtesy the artist), Filippo La Vaccara (courtesy The Flat Massimo Carasi) Jason McLean (courtesy Tracey Lawrence Gallery), Noel McKenna (courtesy Darren Knight Gallery), Jennifer Mills (courtesy Darren Knight Gallery), Joyce Pensato (courtesy Parker’s Box) Raymond Pettibon (a collection of zines and graphic works from 1980s. Courtesy mother’s own), Royal Art Lodge (courtesy mother’s own) Benny Reilly (Courtesy the artist), David Sherry (courtesy mother’s tankstation), David Shrigley (Courtesy mother’s own), Daniel Silver (Courtesy the artist), Bob and Roberta Smith (Courtesy Hales Gallery).

Mother's Tankstation
Contemporary Visual Art Dublin
41-43 Watling Street Ushers Island - Dublin

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