Looking the other way

Charlie Godet Thomas Unfurl

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says for once and for all: yes, climate change is really happening ... when we are facing rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events... when the global population has almost exceeded the resources needed to sustain it in fossil fuels, food and water...  when the gap between rich and poor grows larger daily ... what should art be about?

Artists will make the art they have to make. But curators, selectors, funders and buyers - they decide what kind of art is pushed to the fore. What gets the exposure and the backing, the gallery space and the broadcast time.  In Exeter, two recent - and accidentally related - exhibitions highlight a growing taste for a more old-fashioned type of arty art. Consciously or unconsciously, opinion-formers in contemporary art seem engaged in either a silent scream of existential denial, or blatant complicity with the affluent elite.

In both exhibitions there's an over-riding concern with materiality - the physical substance of the works rather than their context or meaning. At Spacex, Lucy May is showing wax sculptures that have the colour of viscera and the form of baroque decorative embellishments. They are delicious yet slightly disgusting, full of movement yet still.  Alongside this work, Lisa Watts is creating live art in the gallery as part of her research project Skittish.  This work will unfold over the coming weeks but, at the opening, Watts talked about her ideas growing spontaneously out of a response to materials, and specifically not from any issues or political stance.

At the nearby Exeter Contemporary Open, there's work by nine artists selected from a national competition.  It's not thematically curated but you'd never know it. The work is accomplished and interesting but, as far as I can see, none of it is about much apart from its own physical qualities. The strangeness of one material set against another, the humour of correspondences, the fascination of repetition, colour and pattern...

"The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no desire to express, along with the obligation to express." 
Samuel Beckett from the Duthuit Dialogues as quoted by Charlie Godet Thomas in the Exeter Contemporary Open 2013 catalogue.

I have no problem with this sort of work - in fact I get great pleasure from it.  But there's also a part of me that thinks it's the orchestra playing as the ship sinks: distracting us from the environmental disaster that's unfolding around us, keeping us occupied while the very last of our public services are ransacked for profit.

At this point in time - this very critical point - is there really nothing more important with which to fill our galleries than stuff about stuff? Whose agenda is that serving? Or are the problems we face so huge we actually can't look them in the eye any more?

Skittish (Lisa Watts and Lucy May) - Spacex - 28 September–23 November 2013

Exeter Contemporary Open (Charlie Godet Thomas, Rachel Busby, Rebecca Ounstead, Max Cahn, Julie Price, Anne Deeming, Malina Busch, Oliver Tirre, Hannah Mooney) - Exeter Phoenix -
19 September–2 November  2013