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| Taking my mechanical engineer boyfriend to Spike Island was a risky move. I thought he was ready. I was wrong. |
Taking my mechanical engineer boyfriend to Spike Island was
a risky move. There’s scientists who appreciate the arts. There’s scientists
who don’t really appreciate the arts. And then there’s Zac who thought the
Odyssey was written by Homer J Simpson.
We’ve braved more traditional art galleries in the past. He
coped pretty well with the National Gallery, using Snapchat to face swap with
Rembrandt, which you could argue is a postmodern interpretation of the medium
of the self portrait. I thought it was maybe time he took on contemporary,
conceptual art. I thought he was ready. I was wrong.
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Spike Island is a gallery and studio space in Bristol,
showcasing contemporary artists’ works. Currently, Benoît Maire’s Thebes is on display. Spike Island
describes the artist as a ‘visual philosopher’ whose works ‘question the origin
of humankind and the objects we produce.’ In other words, this was arty
fartyness at its best, a lot of abstract paintings and abstract ideas.
As soon as we walk in, Zac tries to get to grips with what
he’s seeing. The entire first room is filled with paintings of clouds,
apparently ‘drawing a parallel between painting and the ever changing forms of
clouds.’ There’s canvas after canvas of splodges of colour, each one a slightly
different interpretation of the concept, moving between figuration and
abstraction. Zac looks around hopefully and eventually says ‘so this is…
Impressionism?’ Nope, but nice try.
I begin to try to explain the difference between the 19th
century art movement and Benoît Maire’s artworks, suggesting that there may
indeed be some parallels… but Zac’s already wondered off to the far side of the
room, standing far too close to a
painting. I grab his arm to pull him back, just because there isn’t a rope to
stop you touching it doesn’t mean they want
your nose impaling the canvas.
Zac is looking at the splodges of paint
and rubbing his chin thoughtfully, ‘I sense a common theme,’ he says after a
while.
‘Oh yes?’ I say encouragingly. Will he have spotted the
references to abstract expressionism, the drawing on action painting, the
blurring of the lines between imagination and reality?
‘There’s these big blimps in all of them.’ Says Zac, point
at a particularly large purple splodge.
‘Er, yes, I suppose there are.’ I mutter, trying to think of
a way to relate this back to an art historical discourse but Zac’s already
plodding off into the next room.
We’re met by a video playing on loop. It’s an amalgamation
of a few different clips, but it mainly has Maria Sharapova repeatedly hitting
a tennis ball whilst the sound echoes around the gallery.
‘I would actually go insane if I had to listen to this every
day.’ Zac says, far too loudly. The volunteer whose job that literally is gives us a glare and we
scuttle away.
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‘I love that.’ Zac’s saying gleefully. The art historian
within me is delighted. Okay, so the cloud paintings weren’t for him, and the
tennis video was a bit weird but maybe this
will speak to him.
‘What do you like about it?’
‘It’s so ridiculous. That’s a caliper, it would obviously
never be able to measure the diameter of that sphere, I mean, look the arms of
the caliper are way too narrow…’
No way have we come to an art gallery only for him to
explain something sciencey to me. On to the next room.
It is full of objects in various arrangements, industrial
tools, found objects and Maire’s own artworks. The guide tells us the room
questions ‘the status of the object, and how we categorise form in art, culture
and nature.’ Zac, helpfully, categorises it all as rubbish.
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The final room is a screening of the word origin, a film showing a man going about his mundane life. We watch the video and I’m completely
bemused. Surely Zac will be too.
‘I noticed a theme.’ He says.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I ask, dreading his response.
‘Eggs. There’s a lot of eggs in the film, I think it’s
talking about the never-ending cycle of life.’
I look down at the exhibition guide, gobsmacked. He’s right.
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We leave the exhibition and I’m a bit shell-shocked, could
my anti-art boyfriend really have spotted something that I didn’t? Does this
change the whole dynamic of our relationship? As we go, he points to a fire
extinguisher, ‘So, what? Am I supposed to accept this is art, too?’
Maybe things are back to normal after all.
For a more intelligent response to the exhibition check out
Epigram’s review.
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