Peregrinations

The visit to my maternal grandfather Bryan on 27th February represented the first port of call on something of a grand tour over the next nine days. We went on a visit of the aatchi Gallery and their new exhibition. Titled ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, without even an ironic nod or wink in the context of Episode V of Star Wars, it was hardly inspiring, doing a disservice to the works on display. No doubt any extravaganza crafted around some loans from the Hermitage would be called ‘From Russia With Love’.
Now, I’m no art expert and am thus no natural in noticing nuances that are not literary. I am a prole. If meaning cannot be discerned and there is no shock value attached (such as the camel folded into a suitcase, which reminded me of a stall in Dalanzagad, southern Mongolia), then I’m not going to be befuddled, much less moved, just indifferent. Of course, I will make an effort to extrapolate any questions posed or ideas raised, but for an untrained eye, I know what I like.
One highlight was a cow buckling from a concrete sewage pipe forced around its neck. Called ‘My Suburban Nightmare’, I felt it showed how suburbs desire to replicate the joys of nature in an urban setting, with nature suffering in the attempt to create this. The industrialisation of cattle production and how unnatural it is was possibly another theme.
A further source of interest were four panels who changed what they showed, like a hologram, depending on the position of the light (or, in this case, as they were affixed to a wall, one’s own stance). Under the heading ‘One Rupee’, it grabbed two news stories, counter-pointing each other, with the story of a mother who could not afford the rupee to feed her daughter, to the telecoms technology tale where anyone in India can call each other via landline for just one rupee. It alludes to the fact that while much of the subcontinent lives in crushing poverty, there are those Indians for whom money is easy to come by with tremendous economic progress overlaying the tragic aspects the wider world does not always see. The boom cannot totally obscure the poor relations with in the country – in many instances they are side by side.
Best of all was ‘Army of Enlightenment’ where a collection of figures constructed loosely from what looked like coathanger wire sported the kind of luminous stretch lights one might find in a kitchen. It was clearly, within the parameters of the show, a reference to the British Army and the Victorian ideal of its ‘civilising’ mission in India and other ‘dark’ places. Liberal interventionism has made a fashionable comeback in recent years though with the sensitive word ‘empire’ dropped from all references to it (‘crusade’ for that matter as well). Thus, these automata could represent the US Army and its allies in Iraq as easily as the British during the years of the Raj. Soulless and mechanical, the enlightenment they purport to bring is artificial. They have the technology but any excuse of the imposition of progress is a sop for the real reason of an army which is to advance and/or secure the values of those that control it.
There were other interesting installations and wall-hangings but these three really engaged my intellect. As you might have gathered, though ostensibly about the British presence in India in the 1920s and 30s, the Amritsar massacre and Gandhi’s salt tax protests, the focus was blurred with much reference to modern India. It could be that this Saatchi spectacular is saying that though a new superpower is in the offing, many of the injustices and inequalities that existed under the British still scar the aspirations of New Delhi; or it could just further underline the laziness of whoever decided that the title of the exhibition was apposite.
Another item of curiosity was Richard Wilson’s work. As you stand on a veranda looking across an unconventional cavern of a room, your first impression is that it is quite deep, yet there is a telltale pungent wisp in the air. You realise that the room does not have such depth after all, but is a reflection of the ceiling and seconds later it dawns that is not black glass in front of you, but oil (and that thus the room might be as deep as you might first have thought it). While playing with our ideas of space and perspective, it also creates dissonance, with a welded metal gash as jagged in shape as lightning, jutting in from the side of the room – a dose of reality injected into the illusion.
Departing the gallery, we then had a very high-class meal, with conversation to match, in the adjoining restaurant before returning to chez Oakes. Tim, Joyce’s son-in-law, unexpectedly popped round and we had fun with the new dog Lucy Bell, Hardy, the previously dog having been very chic in entering (albeit unwittingly) into a euthanasia compact administered by the vet. Lucy-Bell is a bundle of unrestrained energy and with the two brown spots above her eyes reminds me of many Mongolian canines who have a similar trait.
Speaking of the British Empire, Google commemorated St. David’s Day (1st March) on their homepage with that symbol of English might oppressing the Welsh, Caenarvon Castle.
End of part one.