HICA, Dalcrombie, Loch Ruthven, Inverness-shire, until 30 October 2011

EXPLORING relationships between life, “death, memory, material culture and recycling”, Loss Becomes Object represents the first stage of an exciting collaborative project by artists Tracy Mackenna, Edwin Janssen and The Highland Hospice.

This first exhibition and opening event hosted by HICA provided a great opportunity for the gallery space to be “re-presented” and the role of the contemporary artist to be reimagined.

Forces of Attraction and Repulsion

Talks by lead artists Tracy MacKenna and Edwin Janssen gave insight into the evolution of the project and their work with Highland Hospice staff and volunteers, followed by Paula McCormack, Director of Education and Clinical Services at Highland Hospice, who discussed the holistic work of the organisation. The links between artistic practice and issues arising from palliative care will continue to be explored as this “durational” project continues to evolve.

Emma Nicolson, Director of ATLAS, provided valuable context and a basis for further cultural debate in her discussion of international contemporary art projects in Australia and on the Isle of Skye. The whole notion of what constitutes “socially engaged” art practice and the changing role of the artist as a result of artist-led curatorial practice is an area ripe for further debate.

At the centre of the exhibition the re-presentation of donated objects from Highland Hospice shops create a display of The Museum of Loss and Renewal which will continue to evolve into its next incarnation, Object Becomes Subject at The Centre For Visual Research, Dundee, in November 2011. The ways in which processes of life, death and loss can be acknowledged, expressed and visualised through creative process, especially in a society in abject denial of mortality, is of significant value. Loss Becomes Object encompasses life’s biggest questions by creating visual connections. The choice of materials and manner of display provide the viewer with an open space for contemplation; the traditional glass display case, open-sided and constructed from recycled cardboard, expanding our view into the landscape beyond.

Underlying the assemblage of objects is an expanded idea of what art practice can be; of interaction and exchange as a creative force rather than a purely self-referential activity. The juxtaposition of clothes, books and bric-a brac with commissioned reproductions of work by famous artists at the pinnacle of the art market set up fascinating dialogues between product and process. Individually and collectively we define ourselves by the objects we create and the value we attribute to them. The trade of objects in a charity shop or as part of the art market converge in this exhibition, expanding our sphere of reference from personal to social, microcosm to macrocosm.

Life Is Short, Art Long

In Life is Short, Art Long, 2011, a Picasso reproduction shares the palette of an open book of poetry, in particular the imagery of a poem by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly; “the colour of damp violets” and death’s “green” face seen in the still life; giving a whole new meaning to the genre. Living flowers are equally resonant in green and purple, the perfect counterfoil to death. This dynamic is also mirrored in the void blackboard background and persistent words in impermanent chalk: “Life is short and Art long, the crisis is fleeting, experience perilous and decision difficult”.

The arrangement of objects within the three dimensional composition carry shifting emotional and cultural weight, they align themselves in the mind’s eye in ambiguous combinations; lost objects of a life, discarded reminders of a society hell bent on consumption and symbols of fame and artistic celebrity. The frame or display cabinet is portable, disposable, the antithesis of preservation normally associated with a museum or cultural institution. The arrangement of a skein of thin white yarn, drawn out in multiple threads across a blanket is equally ambivalent; evocative of the Moirai or Fates of Greek mythology cutting the thread of human life while enfolding the viewer in the comfort and domesticity of a familiar object.

Landscape seen through glass

Each frame of reference is progressively expansive, the display of postcards on the reverse of the cabinet equally rich in association. Art, photography, drawing in postcard form, all potential communications of intimate scale from one human being to another, interspersed with images akin to the public fame and celebrity. These images; Lichtenstein’s comic book tears, Dali with a jewelled eye patch, the scientific enquiry of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp, a photograph of Picasso the man next to a painted self portrait, an empty suit on a hanger, old hands photographed over drawn ones, the photograph of a young man crying with the pencilled words “I am too sad to tell you” are all imaginative triggers, a complex mind map of potential associations.

In Forces of Attraction and Repulsion 2011 Van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers is seen in mass produced jigsaw form, the outer edges assembled, the bloom of flowers absent as negative space. The entire display is dominated by blue, yellow and orange, a smaller canvas reproduction bled of its colour propped against panels of reclaimed wood in the background. A commissioned reproduction of Van Gogh’s smoking skeleton and a collection of fruit; a real orange and lemon in an expansively dark bowl, a cane apple and ceramic pear mirror the fecund palette, making an immediate and visceral connection with the ripeness of fruit and the knowledge that it must eventually decay. This essential human condition is echoed in the choice of postcard images on the reverse of the cabinet, among them an Italian Renaissance painting of a human body constructed in fruits of the earth.

A large glass vessel containing a Hospice campaign sunflower is also ripe with associations, the heads of flowers following the light and warmth of the sun. Within the collection of objects a blue and white Delft ware plate with the price tag of £2.00 and red sold sticker still attached is suspended adjacent to images by arguably the most famous artist in history – in market terms painted objects selling for tens of millions. Again the frames of reference expand and contract; the open art history book displaying the grief of Old Man in Sorrow (On The Threshold of Eternity), created at the asylum of Saint Remy in the year of the artist’s death. The open book anchors the artist persona to the commonality of human experience, it is an object we can hold, touch and interpret on a personal level.

In HICA’s Rear Gallery No Neutral Representations gives insight into the lead artists’ dual process in its slide presentation of images and ideas. This open sketchbook contains many evocative triggers in text and image demonstrating the link between the lead artist’s creative process and the visual engagement of the viewer. As a touchstone for wider discussion of issues; social, cultural and aesthetic, the exhibition is very successful, displaying an assemblage of objects that encourages contemplation of individual and collective memory, the “cultural relevance of objects” and “their guardianship”. It will be extremely interesting to see how Loss Becomes Object continues to evolve on site at the VRC in Dundee later this year, culminating in a publication in 2012.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• HICA