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18 April - 19 May 1996: INTERNATIONAL HEADACHE CONGRESS Shaun Kirby Anyone familiar with Shaun Kirby's work or who saw the talk he presented at the EAF at the end of 1995, would, to an extent, have been expecting the insidious way in which meaning emerged and then suddenly ducked out of sight; how layerings suggested themselves - the sensation of strata that are structural but not necessarily seen - all adding up to what could be called (to maybe coin a cliché) the iceberg syndrome, where much remains unseen below the water-line but you absolutely know it's there in terms of substance and weight. What you would not necessarily have been expecting, would have been the degree that playfulness came across when compared to the artist's previous exhibitions, where it had been present, but somehow more tied down, out of sight (playfulness degree zero?). Here it was definitely a little more unleashed and bouncing, without the work losing its weight or its gnomic complexities. At the far end of the gallery stood a vast wooden volumetric structure, nail-gunned together out of lengths of timber like a geodesic dome built on acid, which was covered in cloth with stick figures and the legend "Jockey or Nothing" printed all over it. Further up the space, electrical ducting mazed angularly across the floor from a power point on one wall to a bed near the opposite one, where it ended in a large illuminated globe resting on a bobbly foam surface near an unattached false rubber nose. Elsewhere there was a small photo of a building with removed windows each framing the different coloured walls behind, in front of which were two cubes of scented Calvin Klein soaps stacked mini-architecturally. A floor sweeper on a table, pierced by inscribed pens, a large framed photo of a potato sprouting leggy roots, and other things. All of which added to a puzzling and satisfying complexity and amalgam of reference, counter-reference and physicality. |
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