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Review Feb 23 2010 « | »
Peeping Tom at Vegas Gallery Tim Howard and Zoe Troughton review the Vyner street show

Tim Howard

So we're dealing with the voyeur; the 'curious, prying fellow' who gives the show its namesake. Now voyeurism is not new, but nor is it irrelevant. Vegas introduce the show by making the bold statement that all artists today are essentially 'Peeping Toms'; that they all explore the transgressive or the unturned. Supposedly that's correct, but I still read it as an excuse for eclecticism that needn't have been said.

But wait. I'm being too harsh already. Nobody reads the bumpf anyway. Let's talk art. The show's hung in the scattershot/deliberate manner of covering the walls up high and down low. Sometimes this works, sometimes it overwhelms. Here, in the large interior space of Vegas, it works.

It is an eclectic show; there's a huge breadth to the idea of voyeurism and it gets explored here in its utmost. Sex and nudity unavoidably takes the dominant seat. The 'Peeping Tom', or the voyeur, always conjures the image of the perverse spy, looking into a world of all things naughty.

There's more to this show, though, and I was grateful for it. The shallow sexual reading of the show's title would have made it just another titillating show; frankly boring. In the year 2010 I'm finding it rare that images of quadriplegic sex or the blend between porn and art impresses as good art itself. I don't want to be shocked for shock's sake. I want to be impressed, and crossing taboos doesn't.

Interestingly, what the free-range hanging of the work doesn't often allow is as much appreciation for individual works. I think that was the point. The overall show is an overview of voyeurism. We're looking at cut-up drug photos and the photo portraits of a coy girl and the porn snipping without a crotch and the documented dead film extras and receiving a broad outline of what 'Peeping Tom' really meant. For that, I was grateful.

Zoe Troughton

A bit like a beguiling chocolate selection box with no list of flavours, this exhibition was an assortment of pieces; some delicious, some surprising, and some you wish you had never even contemplated. Peeping Tom curated, ironically if you happen to know the origins of the title phrase, by Keith Coventry was indeed a voyeuristic feast.

A general surveillance of the gallery revealed a surface representation of 'peeping'; tasters of eyes, mirrors, shadows and, of course, nudity. On closer inspection a multifaceted exposition of 'peeping toms' was revealed, each with his own observational inclination; private moments, secluded buildings and obsessively intricate geometry. When I looked closer still, stepped fully, albeit precariously, into the shoes of this 'curious, prying fellow' Tom, there were moments of intimate quiet that stood out amongst the noise. Moments that I wanted to magnify, pore over, and draw nearer to with my eyes.

This patchwork-like exhibition made me realise that whilst I do definitely like looking, I don't always like looking at what other people choose to show me. For me personal observation (secret observation even) involves a considerable element of quietude, so inevitably some of the more brash statements of intrusion and voyeurism jarred with me. It was instead pieces such as Emer O'Brien's portrait of a white horse, blissfully drowsy-looking, and apparently unaware that it was being photographed, and Thomas Hutton's microscopic dots on graph paper, that begged me to linger for a little longer.

Amidst the raucously trendy crowd, it was these pieces that offered me some ocular solace, and I can't deny that the thought of the majority being drawn to the more immediately demanding and boisterously explicit images, whilst I noticed the, perhaps, less noticeable, was strangely empowering.

It was with this thought that I moved from looking at the art work, to looking at the others looking at the art work. The saccadic motion of their eyes as they battled to decide between the art and the socialising became rather enthralling. Trying, without being noticed, to pre-empt where they would next settle their gaze, I became burningly aware of people throwing glances at me too. Slightly paranoid (and before I morphed into a true peeping tom, binoculars and all) I decided that I had done enough observation for one evening - but little was I prepared for being confronted by the unrelenting glare of the smokers and their glowing fag ends on my way out.

Peeping Tom is on at Vegas Gallery until 28th March

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