Archive: Issue No. 126, February 2008

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Emily Stainer

Emily Stainer
Cautionary Tales: Chicken Feet I 2007
gouache on paper

Emily Stainer

Emily Stainer
Cautionary Tales: Dolls Eyes III 2007
gouache on paper

Emily Stainer

Emily Stainer
Cautionary Tales: Cows Eyes III 2007
gouache on paper

Emily Stainer

Emily Stainer
Cage II 2006
mixed media

Allison Kearney

Allison Kearney
Image from inventory 2007

Allison Kearney

Allison Kearney
Image from inventory 2007

Allison Kearney

Allison Kearney
Image from inventory 2007


Allison Kearney and Emily Stainer at Goodman Gallery
by Michael Smith

January is a difficult month for art. More than just the fiscal constraints of post-holiday season, people are generally less celebratory than they are at other times of the year. So it must be daunting to be first on the bill at a major gallery. Thus it is all the more difficult to level criticism, however fair, at a show that takes place under such conditions. Yet Allison Kearney and Emily Stainer's two-person show at Goodman Gallery left one wanting a bit more, even if that something was a a greater degree of curatorial finesse.

Though there was much there, both visually and conceptually, to stimulate initial debate and sustain further exploration, one's sense of the bodies of work that made up the show is that it represent steps towards bigger things rather than great stuff in their own right.

The arrangement of the show, with Stainer's body of humorous cage sculptures and intimate gouache paintings placed in spaces flanking Kearney's centrally-positioned forays into interactive art, is not really successful. It seems to force a commingled reading of the bodies of work, despite the artists' disparate intents, and the manifestations of these. Regulars to this gallery are possibly all the more sensitive to this because the Goodman is generally so adept at placing work in their space. One only has to go through the archives of my reviews to see how I've gushed about the curating of Mikhael Subotzky's or Frances Goodman's shows there.

The division of space necessitated the division of Stainer's work into two slices, which does little for the capacity of her individual works to reference and resonate with each other. This is a pity, because hers is a beautifully crafted, if somewhat restrained body of work.

Kearney's chief interest is in making the process of making art more interactive. She has done this by twinning this show with a previous one held at the Premises at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre in 2006. This show was entitled 'About context, an exploration of value in four parts'. At the exhibition, the audience became participants by each bringing something along to add to the artist's collection of objects, while being allowed to swap their object for one of Kearney's. Her intention was to create a collection of objects in which she had a minimized decisive role, and in which the telling minutiae of other lives was allowed to speak.

Here Kearney extended this process, using three sheets of paper for each object: one containing a description of the first object, the second a description of the object for which it was swapped, and the third a reason why that second object was chosen. It was these last bits of texts that were most revealing, as participants revealed bits of their thinking, their desires or simply their ambivalence. An interesting dimension of Kearney's realisation of this project was her choice to present only the images of objects not ultimately removed, or the text relating to objects taken: there were no actual objects on show. This exhibition of an archive of minutiae rather than the things themselves, made for a hugely poetic rumination on the incidental, the trivial: archiving objects inevitably lends them a gravitas.

Yet, one has to wonder whether Kearney's approach to interactivity really challenges the traditional delineation of the creative process in meaningful way. Her decision to locate both processes, the initial collection of objects and then the exhibiting of their inventory, inside art galleries inevitably means that the potential for interactive inclusivity becomes limited to the sorts of people who traditionally attend such spaces. So instead of just speaking herself, she has allowed a fairly rarified audience into her process, only marginally surrendering creative control. My sense of this is that it is not disruptive enough of visual art process conventions to be claiming much credibility as interactive work.

Elsewhere in the space, a beautifully-presented four-screen video, showing Kearney writing wishes on paper aeroplanes, folding them carefully, throwing them off the top of a building and then viewing them as they become part of life on the street below, possibly holds certain possibilities for future projects. Through the documentation of this process shown in a gallery space, the sense that the action began to be connected to non-sanctioned 'art spaces' is more exciting.

Stainer's body of work is fairly evenly divided between small gouache paintings and sculptures of figures in cages. The hyperreal paintings are of body parts carefully placed on fine crockery. Stainer deliberately oscillates between manufactured body parts, as in Cautionary Tales: Dolls Eyes III ( all paintings 2007), and quite gross, real body parts, as with Cautionary Tales: Cows Eyes I and II and Cautionary Tales: Chicken Feet I.

The interplay between reality and simulation is, of course, heightened by one's realisation that the paintings, by their very nature, are simulations. Yet, Stainer's conceptual terrain involves more than mere juxtaposition. Her interest with the works on this show is the gulf between culture's frequent desire to protect children from violence, and the viscerality of old fables and fairy tales, the 'cautionary tales' of her titles. Though not directly linked to any political imperative, Stainer does speak of her awareness of the resonances of such work in a context of rampant violence against children.

This is something that is possibly more immediately evident in her series of cage sculptures. In particular, a work such as Cage II has a pair of mildly sexualised legs, while in Cage I the legs are splayed provocatively. The fact that these are reconfigured dolls' legs injects an ominous tone into the works, Stainer's treatment of them remaining subtle yet strategic. Their placement in cages, and their articulation by a series of cogs along repeated paths of gesture lends the limbs an air of desperation, as if they are doomed to play out their limited motion in confined spaces forever. Again, the implications of this are chilling in a country where abuse and neglect severely inhibit the development and expectations of so many.

There was much here to recommend the show. Both artists exhibited a high degree of conceptual and technical prowess. I look forward to full solo shows by each, in the vein of Kathryn Smith's 'In Camera' at the same venue: that show enabled Smith to utilise the space to great effect, and one hopes Kearney and Stainer are to embrace similar opportunities, soon.

Opens: January 19
Closes: February 9

Goodman Gallery
163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 788 1113
Email: info@goodman-gallery.com
www.goodman-galley.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 9.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 4pm


 

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