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Review Sep 02 2010 « | »
RIBBONS! (The Shape of an Exhibition) Auto Italia's temporary project which occupied the park opposite during July and August sketches what is to come

Valentina Ravaglia

Many readers might remember the recreated office staged last May by project space Auto Italia South East at Tate Modern's No Soul For Sale 2010. The gallery's real foam panels ceiling hung from the roof of the Turbine Hall to hover just a couple of meters above a meeting room, where a group of artists would present works, hold workshops and share their experiences with the visiting public.

Most of the activities devised by Auto Italia seem to reflect upon the exhibition-making process and the role of the gallery space in a meta-narrative fashion. RIBBONS! (The Shape of an Exhibition) is no exception. French artist Breer Lazidj Nahr has suspended a sparse number of coloured ribbons from trees in the small green area opposite the project space, just off Old Kent Road. Auto Italia South East occupies a rather anonymous shopfront, located between a car park and a garage, and this open-air installation fully reflects this understated appearance. Its subtle presence in the park can be mistaken for the remnants of an outdoor birthday party or local fête, common scenes of urban conviviality surrounded by streams of traffic and retail outlets.

As the first instalment in The Shape of an Exhibition, a series of projects interpreting the previous and future lives of the block currently hosting Auto Italia and its immediate surroundings, RIBBONS! is a reflection on an anonymous corner of London, and at the same time it functions as a blueprint for the projects to come: with its linear plastic presence, RIBBONS! is described by its creator as a three-dimensional drawing, aleatory and subject to change, a diagram that intervenes directly on the space it seeks to symbolise. This brings to mind the paradoxical one-to-one map described by Jorge Luis Borges in his short story "On Exactitude in Science", although the curators locate the models for The Shape of an Exhibition in Julien Gracq's 1985 novel The Shape of a City or in Jacques Demy's 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

As a sneak peek into the finale of a story yet to be told, RIBBONS! anticipates the conclusion of the project by evoking the final installation of a permanent playground in that very park. Breer Lazidj Nahr's ribbons may not be leftovers from a non-existing children's party, but they might well be premonitions of future social gatherings, perhaps inspired by Auto Italia's interventions on that overlooked plot of land.

RIBBONS! (The Shape of an Exhibition) is on until 22 August. http://www.autoitaliasoutheast.org/

Philippa Warr

RIBBONS! (The Shape of an Exhibition) is a temporary project occupying a small park opposite Auto Italia in Peckham. It takes the form of shiny ribbons which arc from tree to where, ultimately, the exhibition will conclude with the creation of a permanent park and playground. It also functions as a three dimensional sketch, advertisement, and teaser for the larger project - The Shape of an Exhibition - which is yet to come.

The prospect of a 3D sketch was hugely appealing - an exhibition is, after all, the realisation of an idea in three dimensions - so I was keen to see how ribbons would be used to this effect. The private view also happened to be on a windy day so the ribbons would be shown off to full effect, infused with movement.

What I found when I arrived was more than a little disappointing. For something with ribbons as the title, all in caps lock and with an exclamation mark, there were very few actual ribbons. Those that were present twirled and flexed prettily in the breeze but their attachment to the trees seemed haphazard and visually unappealing. It was as if police incident tape had got tangled into the branches.

The ribbons also only spanned the gap from one tree to another, not using any of the other park structures (railings, bushes, etc). I assume there was a public safety reason for this and for the ribbons being tied at both ends rather than dangling freely but it was a problem. For the 'sketch' tag to work you need a degree of freedom - sketches show an idea in flux not at the point of completion. Ribbons in a breezy space would have been a great way to express this but the execution thwarted the sentiment leaving the strips to delineate a small, closed-feeling space.

The press release explains that "RIBBONS!" is a product of what it imagines. Like a movie imagining the film projector, or a rabbit imagining the top hat from which it will appear". I take this to mean that the ribbons only exist as a precursor to the exhibition and playground but the language is designed not to be easily comprehensible This pinpoints the issue at the heart of RIBBONS!: it is heavy on theory and the execution simply doesn't do it justice. As an installation in a public park that's a huge failing.

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