TOTEM
8th October - 12th November 2004
Private view Thursday 7th Oct 6 pm - 9pm + Launch of I LOVE MY YUGO, Sarah
Carne, MOT car park same night
Simona Brinkmann, Amy Clarke, Tom Ellis, Lee Reagan
The North American Indians passed their stories down the generations orally.
To help them remember each story, they carved Totem poles, which were
stacks of symbols representing the clans that acted as memory sticks to
those that knew the tale. These Totems were not worshiped, but were rather
keys to the unconsciousness, monuments from the past or stairways to the
future. Modernism embraced this model and Capital sponsored the erection
of its own symbols or totems, all aiming skyward competing for their place
in the clouds. At MOT, from our own elevated position above east London,
the skyline still attests that there is still some undying belief in ‘up
is best’. Wondering if this was at all reflected in the work of
any of today’s young dreamers, we invited four sculptors to present
us with their totems.
Amy Clarke gives more than a nod to Brancusi’s
Endless column, in her piece, UN-LIMITED, which is made up of a column
of pint glasses, drinking end to table end, mimicking those of Brancusi.
This column acts as a maquette for a 1:2 version which, in turn informs
a 1:3 version. As with Brancusi, Clarke alludes to her sculptures as being
architectural models, with the endless increases in scale leading to her
glass columns replacing the Swiss re building ( erotic gherkin). Brancussi’s
Tirgu Jiu Sculpture groups endless column, represented the aspirationof
ascent from earth to the heavens whereas Clarke’s materials suggests
that these dreams lie at the bottom of a glass and as such are empty and
often end in dissapointment.
Lee Reagan has just finished his MA at Reading and enters
the London art scene bristling with bravado and cocksure. In fact Reagan
does not hide his interest in the phallic, linking it with the architectural
folly. He sees all his work as a folly, a self indulgent process, leaving
a legacy and a monument to his own artistic aspirations. For Totem he
will be providing us with a stack of recycled trophies, each representing
a forgotten individual’s achievement which on mass emphasise their
generic production and delusive quality.
Tom Ellis plays with the visual language related to the
modernist notion of truth to materials. He uses mass produced objects
such as garden chairs or mdf to create visual puns usually around the
notion of reflection. He makes sculptures which act as images while being
no more than a collection of readymade objects. His piece for Totem involves
a stack of chairs inverted on top of a mirror which is itself supported
off the floor, at exactly the same height as the stack above, by a stack
of objects from his studio. The mirror projects the chairs back onto the
floor and a sagging piece of plywood placed on the inverted feet of the
chairs recreates the visual presence of the floor.
Simona Binkmann will be showing MEEK, a stack of video
monitors on which runs an image of a male reclining figure that has been
filmed through a horizontal succession of cropped shots, arms, feet, chest,
although the head and therefore the identity is never revealed. Brinkmann
uses film as a symbol for bigger issues. She chooses to use super 8 and
transfer this to video, which produces a flashing or abstraction and combined
with the installation of the monitors, alludes to a film strip. Brinkmann
sees this deconstruction of moving image as a link with film’s past,
predominantly its use in medical science for psychiatric study, mainly
that of women. Brinkmann wishes to reverse this legacy by making her subject
male. The grainy black and white footage combined with the stack of utilitarian
broadcast monitors are reminiscent of the Utopian housing blocks of early
soviet europe which brings us back to Modernism via architecture.
There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold and she’s
buying a stairway to heaven... And it makes me wonder... And she’s
buying a stairway to heaven, uh uh uh.
ALSO in association with MOT
I LOVE MY
YUGO
Sarah Carne
London tour
8th, 9th, 10th, 15th, 16th, 17th October
The Yugo
will be traveling between MOT, Keith Talent, 1000000mph, Cell and Jeffrey
Charles Gallery on these dates.
To book a ride call 07981336628 and leave contact details, visit www.sarahcarne.co.uk
for more details.
MOT
Unit
54/5th floor Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road London E8 4QN
T
+44 (0)207 923 9561 M +44 (0)7931 305 104
e motlondon@yahoo.co.uk
Open Fri, Sat, Sun 12-5 or by appointment
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