John Goto
dal 5/2/2004 al 13/3/2004
Segnalato da
5/2/2004
John Goto
Andrew Mummery Gallery, London
Gilt City. Gilt City, the third part of Ukadia, John Goto's satirical look at contemporary Britain. Having examined, in Capital Arcade our obsession with consumerism and branding and, in High Summer at 'Heritage Britain' and our cult of landscape, Goto has now turned his attention to the City Of London. Using friends and associates as his models, Goto has created a cast of colourful, outsider street-types who he has placed, using digital collaging, amongst the gleaming marble, stone and glass surfaces of London's financial centre.
"Gilt City"
The Andrew Mummery Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its 2004
exhibition programme with Gilt City, the third part of Ukadia, John Goto's
satirical look at contemporary Britain. Having examined, in Capital Arcade
[ 1997-99 ] our obsession with consumerism and branding and, in High Summer
[ 2000-01 ] at "Heritage Britain" and our cult of landscape, Goto has now
turned his attention to the City Of London. Using friends and associates as
his models, Goto has created a cast of colourful, outsider street-types who
he has placed, using digital collaging, amongst the gleaming marble, stone
and glass surfaces of London's financial centre. Alluding to the photography
of Atget, Sander and contemporary photographers like Mikhailov and diCorcia,
Goto also draws upon Marcellus Laroon's series of prints from the late
seventeenth-century, The Cryes of the City of London, which depicted
different types of street hawkers.
In writer Mark Durden's words: "Gilt City's" characters imply the
possibility of resistance and subversion. Yet at the same time these
outsiders are also insiders. Details in Goto's tableaux function as signs
whose connotations very often flout and undermine the codes and conventions,
the rhetoric, ordinarily associated with documentary. There is an attention
to signifying details: to do with the style of clothing, incongruously often
fashionable and trendy'' evident through all the designer labels and logos''
and the accompanying objects, which are often just as anomalous, like the
can of Beck's in his ''portrait' of the urinating man. In Bucketman, one of
the most theatrical and comic, the male does a headstand with his head in a
semi-transparent bucket. The performer's body position is emblematic of the
artist's satirical perspective on the world. The inversion of the figure
corresponds with the inversions of values which recur in Gilt City. The
performance of this street entertainer also points to a condition of wilful
blindness, of putting your head in the sand. Goto, rooted in a tradition of
satire and irony, revisits documentary's history but keeps his distance from
it. He borrows and distorts the codes of documentary in order to portray
contemporary capitalist concerns and tap into liberal humanist guilt,
desires and fears. (from ''Mixed Messages: Disordering Documentary' by Mark
Durden, essay published in Ukadia)
The exhibition coincides with the London launch of the book Ukadia, which
fully documents John Goto's three most recent bodies of work, Capital
Arcade, High Summer and Gilt City, and contains essays by Robert Clark, Mark
Durden and Charles Saumarez Smith.(108 pp, hardback, published by Djanogly
Art Gallery, Nottingham. ISBN 1 900809 16 8. Copies will be available from
the Andrew Mummery Gall
ery during the exhibition at a special price of £15
plus p+p)
Image: Gilt City, Bucketman
Friday 6th February 6pm - 8pm
Coming Soon: Maria Chevska The Letters of R.L. 24 March - 8 May.
Andrew Mummery Gallery
Studio 1.04 Tea Building
56 Shoreditch High Street
London E1 6JJ
t/f: +44 (0)20 7729 9399