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Review May 19 2009 « | »
Skart: On the Origins of Wishes at Space Literally translated as 'trash' or 'scraps', Skart peppers a canvas of t-shirts, schoolbooks, photos and papers, with crayola scrawlings......

Gianna Vaughan

Literally translated as 'trash' or 'scraps', Skart peppers a canvas of t-shirts, schoolbooks, photos and papers, with crayola scrawlings to create a visual tantrum. The confused and childlike array of media that forms the opening piece in a retrospective of the Belgrade Art Activist group is more petulant than effectively polemical.

The exhibit charts 20 years worth of work, however, and it appears the group have gradually achieved clarified their interpretation of the relationship between the visual and the textual.

Indeed, their most effective work is their most recent. Initiated in 2000, by a women's group in Belgrade and mimcd by an all male group in 2007, Skart have produced a bizarre collection of handkerchiefs embroidered with images and words. The power of the cartoon like pictures derives from the juxtaposition of violent or uncomfortable subject matter, with delicacy of workmanship.

Predominantly white, with blue or red stitching, the cloths are much more effective conceptually than visually. The idea behind the project was both to take a traditionally patriarchal craft and turn it into an opportunity for women to say what they really think, and explore a means of disseminating information that deliberately rejects the excess of capitalism. Although it is an intriguing project, the latter goal is inhibited by the necessity of context. Alone, the works would have little impact and potentially serious messages become more like the consumerist gimics they're tying to avoid, "while the black hole was being faked, we got hit by a real one and were backed."

Compare this to the gravity with which participants discuss their chosen subjects in the accompanying video interviews and the overall effect is unintentionally comic. Criticising a myriad of 'sins' from facebook, to beauty magazines and exclusion from the EU, the works reflect rather than escape the cliche of older women as nags.

The exhibit is heralded as having a profound sense of timing given the current economic climate, but Skart's use of recycled materials to promote alternatives to capitalist cultural productions, seems more lucky than intentional, particularly when contrasted with their video installations. Space has a website with details on it {here}.

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