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installation view
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11 September-5 October 1997: ALBUM various artists Craige Andrae Travel is obviously of some import to Craige Andrae. His excellent solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Centre of SA a few years back was full of images and allusions to change, translation and movement. In Album various artists we have works that have been part informed by a recent trip to Europe during which the artist checked out some of the productions usually considered 'great'. In a way the exhibition can be seen as echoing the eighteenth century liberal education tradition of the Grand Tour where, as a rite of passage to full maturity, gentlemen and gentlewomen would propel themselves around Europe and Italy absorbing the landmarks of Classical and Renaissance civilisation. And then get home to Yorkshire or wherever the family estate may be and build their own Roman or Greek grotto in the back garden. The resultant architectural productions usually considerably improved (be it in terms of utility, hygiene or picturesqueness) on the original. Andrae has used a number of works by European and American artists as a starting point for some of the pieces in this exhibition, some not too difficult to identify, others more or less obscured. But this is not some act of homage or simple translation (or thank the Lord about any tyranny of distance), the original works are just the jumping off point for new productions, and have started trails of thought. We can see Calder, trace Duchamp, and be pretty certain of Mondrian as references, but the works have their own autonomies and concerns: sometimes about our attitudes to the 'other', the 'trademarked' and otherwise authorised (Mobile) where all the clothes hanging there are luxuriating in the name of their maker - Hugo Boss socks Yves SaintLaurent underwear etcetera: epitomies my dear of la sophistication European n'est ce pas? Not to mention how much money it takes to actually own a name ("the most expensive shirt that I have ever bought" the artist says). In Garden a pretty invisible reference to Monet and his fascination with his garden serves to generate a work that considers the artist's relationship to their immediate environment and everyday life and what serves as engines and material for production. Other pieces in the exhibition are not directly linked to specific works of art - Guernsey, Untitled etc - but are to do with events and the artist's perceptions of what is going on around him. Always, a questioning and thinking about art, its politics, its functions and purposes, how its made and how we see it, are central to Andrae's quizzing gaze and intelligence. And because of our awareness of this, it becomes as if the artist has become complicit in our viewing, is at our elbow tugging and nudging us as we walk around the show. After all, this is the work of an artist as viewer (as traveller) - as well as maker - and an album of images of, and thoughts about, what he has seen. |
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installation view
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