HICA , Loch Ruthven, Dores, Inverness-shire, until 6 May 2012

FEATURING three recent video works by London-based conceptual artist Doug Fishbone, Elimina, Untitled (Hypno Project) and It’s Not You It’s Me, this latest exhibition at HICA explores consumer culture in an era of mass consumption and the “relationship(s) between audience, meaning and context.”

IN Elimina the artist produces and stars in a feature length episodic melodrama shot in Ghana. Directed by Emmanual Apea, scripted by the local production team and featuring a cast of Ghanaian celebrities, the work is an amalgamation of West African popular culture intended for mainstream DVD distribution and “a limited edition art work for a Western art world audience”.

Doug Fishbone's Elmina

The presence of a white visual artist within an all African cast operates like a two-way mirror in relation to notions of cultural identity, mass media and celebrity. Elimina presents the audience with a fascinating premise for deeper exploration of the role of the contemporary artist, universality of visual language and globalisation; however, viewed over one and a half hours in a gallery setting the concept of the work takes precedence over and above the video as visual communication of these ideas .

While the work raises many questions about visual conventions and reception of images and meaning in different cultures, these can be unpacked very rapidly and consequently do not warrant extended viewing in the same way as compulsively following a drama or serial. The basic premise that “the possibility that a given work can operate on a number of different levels simultaneously depending on who views and in what context” is hardly a revelation. Arguably all works of art defy “any single identity or reading”, the context of how or why a work is created as well as the context of the viewer in a particular place and time will always influence meanings attributed to a work of art in any era.

There are many topical issues at work in Elimina including race, political power and the global oil industry which are articulated through dialogue and with the presence of a displaced white protagonist, whose casting is never actually interrogated by the unfolding drama. This play on subtlety doesn’t actually work as there is still an elephant (or multiple elephants) in the room which aren’t explored in any depth within the chosen framework of media convention. While this contradiction is interesting it is not enough to sustain interest for the duration, at least not as it is presented here in a gallery setting as a limited edition statement. True to the title of the exhibition the work is Neither Here Nor There, in tune perhaps with its stated themes and objectives but out of sync with the basic need and satisfaction of seeing multiple meanings prompted directly by the visual work itself.

Doug Fishbone's Elmina

Untitled (Hypno Project) is a much more satisfying and immersive work by comparison. It juxtaposes of a sequence of images derived from popular culture and history with film footage of twelve participants filmed as they watch a short video under hypnosis, each having been given specific suggestions instructing them to respond to visual and aural cues. The third element overlaid is the voice of the artist and the interplay between his treatise on seeing, the pre-programmed responses of the filmed audience and the rapid associative power of sequential images is perhaps is the best visual communication of a work of art functioning on multiple levels and subject to multiple interpretations in the exhibition.

It is provocative in terms of questioning accepted truths and associative meanings in relation to images and symbols but perhaps more potently explores these ideas within its own technique. There are four overlapping dialogues here; artist’s voiceover, two visual frames of reference which inform, contradict and illuminate each other, and the mind of the viewer interpreting this material in a myriad of ways. The idea and technique equal each other, communicating a fluid rather than fixed reality and the uncertainty of human knowledge in our own age or any other. This dynamic is communicated not by words on a press release but by the artist’s chosen medium split convincingly into multiple frames of association.

Its Not You It’s Me also explores received and perceived meanings, in a more humorous way through the artist’s musings on relationships, dating and Jesus as personal saviour, trainer or shopper. It is however Fishbone’s Untitled (Hypno Project) video that resoundingly steals the show

Neither Here Nor There is a fascinating and contentious reflection of contemporary global culture and the role of the conceptual artist within it.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• HICA