airspace
super market
I finally overcame my reluctance and went to see the Ecce Homo Tesco exhibition at the airspace gallery yesterday, and, as usual, I am very glad that I did so. I was reluctant because everything about this exhibition is off-putting: the image and text used in the promotional material, the work in the gallery window and the exterior of the gallery itself. I don’t know how else the gallery could have promoted the exhibition, though, because this work is not visually pleasing. It is not designed to entice or pamper the casual viewer.
On one level, it is a single joke, which is a slim conceit for a whole exhibition. It is a future history, a display of archaeological finds from our future but displayed in a style that you might find in a museum today. The central hypothesis is that, as a species, we will evolve to have very long forearms, the result of carrying heavy shopping bags. Skeletons are on display with these adaptations, set in vaguely-suggested dioramas involving shopping trolleys or similar accoutrements.
These are backed up by supportive elements – a panel explaining the development of the adaptation, and an extremely grainy monochromatic film of a man in an ape mask clumsily using tools, as though he is a Neanderthal but the tools are from our time. There are conscious echoes of real archaeological discoveries, the development of theories of human evolution and the Piltdown man hoax, as well as swipes at museum displays, which I can’t help taking personally, even though I have nothing to do with the displays where I work and indeed would agree that many of them leave something to be desired.
Underlying the joke, however, is the serious proposition that Tesco, and presumably major supermarkets and chain store retailers in general, have an overly-powerful position in our society, to the extent that they distort the economics of production and consumption, the layout of roads and towns and our general ways of living. The fact that the cleared land behind the gallery has been waiting for many years for a new development by Tesco is merely further ammunition.
The exhibition was due to close tomorrow, but has been extended for a further week.
coping strategies
I went to see ‘Trying to Cope with Things that Aren’t Human: Part One’ at the airspace gallery the other day. It was the first time I’d been to the gallery, partly because I’ve not been able or wanted to go to a gallery for a long time but also partly, I’m ashamed to say, because the outside looks so forbidding, but I really enjoyed the exhibition. It was funny and clever and, yes, thought-provoking.
It’s good to have a gallery like airspace in Stoke.
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