British Rubbish
Tim Noble & Sue Webster Exhibition Review
Independent Art Space, London, 22nd June - 3rd August 1996
Programming Note: I was an early follower of Sue and Tim’s work when they were just starting to establish themselves within the London art community in the early nineties. I was fascinated by their work, their relationship, and how they thought about the world. I worked with Sue on designing some shirts for a seminar on ‘The Artist as Superstar’ for my time at Kingston, but I lost touch with them once I later moved to Holland to attend the Jan van Eyck Akademie. Tim and Sue’s practice has become well known and collected around the world, and it’s incredible to see their success since those early years when I initially knew them. I must try and connect with them and grab a pint together when they’re next in New York.
“In one of the early pieces I wore a clown mask and danced, and I realized right away that there was something very disturbing about that happy face.”
Paul McCarthy
Upon arriving at the meet and greet atmosphere of the Independent Art Space, the viewer is instantly presented with two seemingly perverse options - do they go left through a gateway of plastic topiary and onto whatever is beyond, or right, into a space populated by mechanistic figures busy constructing a large white cube?
Going right, Webster and Noble's The Artwerk consists of a quasi-minimalist white object in the process of construction by a group of approximately two feet high animatronic figures in the genre of those found in cobbler's windows. Frighteningly happy in their work, their faces grin as they saw, sand and join the work into shape. At first glance, the scene appears rather reminiscent of small village shops or Agatha Christie set pieces, yet the underlying sense of unease later starts to gradually get hold of the somewhat voyeuristic spectator - something isn't right here. The outfits the figures wear suddenly become familiar as those worn by borstal inmates (a la Scum), and the faces more unnerving in their constant smiles.
In a sense, this smiling, however uneasy it might make the viewer, seems to toy with the supposed notion of artistic creational angst . The studio, the arena of pre-exhibition assemblage, has been transported into the gallery, as if one stage too early. Yet in saying this, the detachment through the fabrication of the work appears to be the important functioning thing here - the grinning assistants just mindlessly churning out the work ad nauseum.
Therefore gloss or finish is rejected in favor of a focus upon craft and working process, attempting to provide some insight into the alleged mystique of the artists' thought patterns. How successful this is becomes debatable when compared with the artistic heritage it seeks to address - Hans Namuth's photographs are now such an integral part of the means by which Abstract Expressionism is mediated, that to address this issue appears problematic in the light of a lack of any contemporary legacy or celebrity.
Displayed next to this environment is a large series of scatalogical scribblings, having the appearance of having been culled from the artists' toilet walls. Hung in a perversely celebratory manner, the drawings (on envelopes, scraps of paper etc.) demonstrate the rantings of an obsession with debasing contemporary critical subculture, and is perhaps more revealing about the artists' actual working processes. It seems more structured in aesthetic content. The wall reads like a torrent of abuse and subversion of much of contemporary art - versions of Gilbert and George's Misfits appear regularly, as do working drawings for the mechanized figures in frighteningly perverse situations.
In most respects, the cliched crassness of this work is its strength, and works to its advantage through its knowingness (whatever this might mean), and rather than a barbed subversion, becomes more of an open celebration.
The plastic hedging of the other half of the space initially introduces a Natural History vitrine horribly metamorphosized. It depicts a forest clearing, complete with stream, in which mechanized toy bunny rabbits play, pop out of holes, and, to great amusement, shag for all their worth in an endless ritual of clockwork copulation. Reminiscent of artists such as Richard Long or Robert Smithson bringing back parts of the countryside into the urban gallery, this work has the twist of being completely fabricated and artificial, and is more successful in its parody of heroic art history.
Webster and Noble's situationalist led British Rubbish rides on a wave of cultural nationalism prevalent in London this Summer, and I believe that it is by no accident that the show coincides with Euro 96 and The Sex Pistols returning to upset us all again. It is surprisingly refreshing to see a young artistic collaboration so finely tuned as to deride, preclude and negate any tangible system of value, and the show appears unafraid to openly display its artistic influences.
To its credit, it provides an oblique and humorous viewpoint upon that which has become so comfortingly dominant in contemporary practice in recent years.
July 1996
