4/2/2010
Water, fire, earth
Rbr, Tokyo
Patrick Tomlinson, Jack McLean and Natasha Rees. By means of exploring basic elements of nature, three bodies of work from artists from three different continents contextualise one element each: water, fire and earth.
By means of exploring basic elements of nature, three bodies of work from artists from three different continents contextualise one element each: water, fire and earth. The familiar and global understanding of each element takes a personal and cultural relevance through associations with political, fictional and daily-life notions, weaving ideas about nature and superficiality, reality and fantasy. Stark in seriousness or light with humour, we learn how to re-investigate the proverbial and mundane.
Patrick Tomlinson’s Walking Churchill Falls project examines in photography and water installation the power lines that extend from Labrador’s Churchill Falls hydroelectric power station in Newfoundland, Canada. The controversial scheme which saw the province of Newfoundland signing a 65 year contract with Quebec in 1969 to facilitate routing the electricity to Montreal and New York in a one-sided deal which allows Quebec to keep an estimated 95% of the profits, still has 31 years before its expiration. More importantly, Tomlinson’s long-standing fascination with water addresses the manipulation, control and containment of the natural world by man. Showcasing 34 Mason jars full of water from Churchill Falls, one representing each year before the end of the 65 year contract (including 2010), is an allegory for man’s domination of nature to fulfil his own purposes and to command it. The water installation is shadowed by a photographic representation of the power lines which Tomlinson took while walking along the length of the lines.
“Taming” nature, in contrast, is exactly what British artist Natasha Rees’s series Fire Drawings / Drawing Fire is not addressing. Her violent and brilliant depictions of fire, borrowed from a selection of stories she found on the internet – images of war and arson, scientific tests or acts of martyrdom – detached from their original story to construct a new tale, each becoming a fusion of fiction and reality. These de-contextualised images of conflagration emphasis fire itself and take their inspiration from the cinematographic aesthetic of Michael Haneke and Werner Herzog and make references to the atmospheric paintings of JMW Turner. The collection of 20 drawings in this show, presents Rees’s fascination with fire like stills of a storyboard for a nonexistent film.
Tokyo-based Scottish artist Jack McLean Hole Project portrays a sculptural intervention in a public park in Tokyo. McLean’s interest in street art and sixties action performance-art presents meticulous and elaborate planning for self-concealment for the purpose of intrusion on public space. Depicting his effort through artefacts, drawings and photographs, we learn about the artist fascination with danger and his desire to physically create a three dimensional manifestation of a drawing. Presenting a set of ‘idea sketches’, documentation photographs, maps and the actual equipment: homemade ghillie suit and a folding shovel, we track McLean’s adventure to dig a conical hole approximately 1m in diameter and 30-50 cm deep in a Tokyo park.
Opening 5 february 2010
Rbr
1F Nishimachi House, Moto-Azabu 2-14-4 - Tokyo