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Review Aug 05 2010 « | »
Young Gods at Charlie Smith Charlie Smith's survay show of 2010 London-based graduates

Michael Allen

Charlie Smith London director Zavier Ellis has chosen nine artists from the 'best of London's 2010 graduate and postgraduate shows' to exhibit in Young Gods. Consisting of eight postgraduates and one graduate, all of whom have graduated from the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths or the Slade (the University of the Arts colleges have evidently been silently omitted) the exhibition takes place in a small room situated above a pub in Old Street.

Welcome, by Lara Rettondini, is a spoken word audio which plays into the entrance stairwell of the gallery. An impersonal female voice reels off an officious list of institutional prohibitions, ranging from the quotidian: 'Photographing, filming or sound recording are not permitted', to the bizarre: 'Discharging bodily waste is absolutely prohibited here.' These increasingly surreal injunctions accumulate into an ironic disclaimer which occasionally directly contradicts the exhibition's contents, such as the forbidding of sharp objects as disparaged by Rettondini's own Point - a steel kitchen knife extruding defiantly from the gallery wall.

Nika Neelova's sculpture The Night Also Falls resembles a large crashed chandelier, composed of burnt timber and black charcoal fragments suspended in place by a thick rope. This haunting baroque centerpiece sets a strong parallel with other more slight or ephemeral gestures in the show such as Joshua Bilton's photographic diptych Post 1 and Post 2, which depicts temporary geometric constructions within natural landscapes, or Ryan Riddington's black and white poster Control, which shows the artist sitting atop a stool or plinth, transfigured by being paired with the printed lyrics to a Janet Jackson song.

Alexis Milne's video Riot depicts a small group of masked youths throwing placards, a shopping trolley and various roadwork detritus at a projection of footage from riots in 1968. Performed to the soundtrack of 'Street Fighting Man', the intermingling images of physical and projected bodies coalesce into a coarse yet sensually rhythmic choreography, however effectively suffer from being here displayed on a small monitor.

The Charlie Smith project, now four years in the running (the gallery space has been open since December 2009,) could have aimed to accomplish more with less works in Young Gods, especially regarding the limited size of the exhibition space, however it is understandable that the gallery wants to promote as many newly graduated artists as it feels it can.

Young Gods at Charlie Smith London ends August 7th, 2010.

James Lindley

Even before climbing the staircase to 'Young Gods', Charlie Smith's subtly named survey of recent graduates, an officious female voice lists a litany of forbidden activities and items. 'No Sharp Objects' she warns. Automatically my mind races mentally through the contents of my bag, almost before I consider the possibility of this being an art work, so acclimatised am I to such rules and regulations from public transport and large museums.

In fact it is a piece entitled Welcome by Lara Rettondini, it's blankly official tone effectively parodying such warning announcements. Inside the Gallery, Rettondini's other piece, Point presents a large kitchen knife sticking directly outwards from the gallery wall. This time there is no warning, no rules, and you are left to contemplate and react to the inherent danger and formal beauty of the highly styled object as you will.

Both Rettondini's pieces cause me to consider how differently we react to anything when visiting a gallery, never quite sure what is art and what is not. The work in the show is a mixture of painting, sculpture, video and prints, the relative lack of discourse between works demonstrating the main problem with mixed group surveys such as this.

Displayed on a small wall mounted screen, Alexis Milnes Riot, shows a group of performers enacting a somehow hollow reproduction of rioting, hurling wood against a large projection of old and new footage of real riots to a soundtrack of 60's and newer rock. This soundtracked violence against the image, not the police or state, seemingly questions the current relationship between art and activism. Are movements towards radicalism in art simply attempts to highjack some counter-cultural cool?

Other interesting pieces include Nika Neelova's chandelier-like charcoal sculpture The Night Also Falls, and Joshua Bilton's Post 1 & Post 2 (Diptych) two black and white prints of rudimentary architectural forms that suggest an occurrence or story, but are perhaps a little over-familiar in their language and presentation.

The other works in the show didn't really do it for me, but with each artist only showing one or two small pieces it is hard to delve deeper into what each is getting at. That said, most of the pieces suggest these artists maybe worth keeping an eye on, and the mixture of work suggests the strength in variety and depth of graduates coming out of London's Art Schools.

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