Go straight to the main content



murmurART

art advisory - looking for something specific or help in finding work by early career artists. contact info@murmurart.com
Review Dec 01 2008 « | »
Mark McGowan re-enacts the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes At 2pm on Saturday at Stockwell Tube Station, Mark McGowan performed a shoddy and insensitive re-enactment of the killing......

Donald Eastwood

At 2pm on Saturday at Stockwell Tube Station, Mark McGowan performed a shoddy and insensitive re-enactment of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in front of perhaps 30 spectators, of which at least 10 were part of the act and at least 6 were police officers. The performance artist, who often labels his work as protest, walked up with a box over his head with de Menezes' image taped to the front, fell to the ground in front of the station (not in a tube carriage where the actual killing took place) and had tomato sauce squeezed onto him by other box-wearing performers waving cardboard cut-out guns. A video was taken, pictures were posed for, and then it was over.

A certain coincidence marginally heightened the dull sensationalism and it was seized upon. The Daily Mail cover spread on Saturday broke the news that Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green's home was raided under dubious pretexts by counter-terrorism officers and one of the artist's friends was handing out free copies before the performance with a furrowed brow.

The whole thing was overtly crass, ridiculous and, though exploitative of a serious and troubling event, possibly rendered inoffensive by the genuine sympathies of its ignorant participants. A similar sentiment can be found here, though the writer fails to consider this quite justifiable reaction any further.

McGowan's stunts are consistantly punctuated by similar themes: attention-grabbing subjects; overt failure or a inability to follow through; foolish, shallow engagement in the subject and simple credulity in one side of the theme. It is, in a sense, tabloid performance and though he was surely ignorant to this theme, the coincidence of the solemn Daily Mail distributor rings even truer, with the paper's stubborn and defensive championing of civil liberties and loathsome prejudice. The biggest question it raises of McGowan is this: Can he really be that foolish? It is the same question that reoccurs in the face of those tabloid articles (where the answer is often no) and the celebrities on their pages (where it is often yes).

This is an interpretive art form, and so drawing such quick conclusions of his work as McGowan's characters do in it can be unhelpful. It is in any case incorrect to think of him as not self-aware: 'Take part in the spectacle and always enter it in the shallow end,' he has said of his work, which is often humorous. Whether it is even more offensive for this awareness and humour is another, more troubling question. At any rate, its garishness does coincide with many popular reactions to events such as these.

At least have a look at his other videos, particularly the one where he fails to set himself on fire ("I've got me flammable suit and I've got some unleaded petrol") before you make your mind up. His website is here and his youtube account here.

    Comments

Add Comments

  • CAPTCHA Image