ART CITIES:London-Protest

Taking as a starting point Alice Neel’s painting, “Nazis Murder Jews” (1936), the exhibition “Protest” at Victoria Miro Gallery in London presents works by 16 artists who question the status quo and the power structures found within societies, and who take the language of protest as a means to explore its potency.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Victoria Miro Gallery Archive

The works of the exhibition “Protest” examine the socio-political issues of their day, including migration, censorship and struggles for equality and democracy, featuring both historical and contemporary works. These do not document protests per se. Rather, through image, composition, gesture, material, form or concept they serve as meditations on contemporary issues or as calls to action, inspiring consideration of possibilities for a life of freedom and unity, an insistence on human rights, and continued dialogue around the immediate social and political issues which confront our global community.  On presentation are works by: Doug Aitken, Jules de Balincourt, Vlassis Caniaris, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Christian Holstad, Isaac Julien, Yayoi Kusama, Wangechi Mutu, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Richard Prince, Sarah Sze, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kara Walker. The power of words, slogans, graffiti, signs, newspaper stories and the interpretive space opened up between their transmission and reception are explored in works such as “Homage to the Walls of Athens 1941-19…” (1959), by Vlassis Caniaris, this is a leading work of the postwar Greek Avant Garde, addressed with political terms in Marchel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917). Ian Hamilton Finlay’s “La Rèvolution est un Bloc”, (1992), a wooden block carved with the words of the title and a central aperture reminiscent of a guillotine’s lunette, refers in content and form both to advances in secular democracy and social progress, and the bloodshed and unrest brought about by the French Revolution. Doug Aitken’s “Free”, (2016) is a sculptural text work lined with shattered mirror, takes a single word and, through the actions of light and reflectivity, turns a ‘quick read’ into an endlessly shifting experience. Juxtaposing images of heated demonstrations with erotic or pornographic images, in the series “Untitled (protest)” (2012-14), Richard Prince finds meaning itself is something to be stymied and subverted as a Dada-esque act of protest. Borders, boundaries and thresholds are also a focus. Yayoi Kusama’s enveloping sculpture “Prisoner’s Door” (1994), places the viewer in a space defined equally by forces of containment and release. The broken structure of Elmgreen & Dragset’s installation “Prison Breaking/Powerless Structures, Fig. 333” (2002), imagines a moment of natural or manmade disaster, when the cell becomes physically powerless and the concept of captivity becomes meaningless. Questions about what art that deals with newsworthy issues, or protests against the suffering of others should look like are asked by Isaac Julien who, in “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (The Leopard)” (2007), brings together baroque pageantry and metaphor in a work that, referring to journeys made across the Mediterranean by Asians and Africans trying to enter Europe by sea. In the series of works on paper “Tell Me Your Thoughts on Police Brutality Miss (Spank Me Harder)” (2015), Kara Walker conflates different eras, idioms and attitudes to explore racism, its symbols and legacy from the American Civil War to very recent killings and assaults that have fuelled the Black Lives Matter campaign.

Info: Victoria Miro Gallery I, 16 Wharf Road, London, Duration 23/9-/11/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.victoria-miro.com