return to worldwidereview.com,
the home of critical reviews
From: Vestin Pance Category: Art Date: 03 March 2009 Time: 08:38 AM Review: Kurt Vonnegut once said through the auspices of one of his fictitious characters (based on experience), that "abstract art" was invented to make the poor feel stupid. Not an altogether justifiable comment but certainly one that springs to mind when considering the fault line dividing the accessibility of an exhibition like Patrick Keillers research based historical work held at BFI and this current show by J & L Wilson. Without wishing to appear curmugeonly, the work fails to connect my broadest perspective of art, even with my narrowest scrap of information about them or their reasoning; research based project by twin sisters Jane and Louise Wilson based on research by Stanley Kubrick for a film about "the" holocaust. Is their any relevant criteria in this description of the exhibition ?, is there a reason why this shelved proposal for a film should be researched over any other shelved film? Is there a salient reason for Twin sister artists to be working on this project? I understand the connection between Stanley Kubrick and the BFI, I cannot in all sincerity, see the point of a living artist endowing the mantle of a dead artists unfinished work, unless greatness by association is the objective. This has happened several times before, once in my stomping ground of St.Ives with Barbara Hepworths untouched block of marble being bestowed upon some worthy sculptoral candidate, it's just the sort of rubbish that administrators get their rocks off on, because they aspire to networking their way up some greasy pole toward management heaven. Whatever happened to that block of marble surely it could have been preserved as a potent focus point ? Jane and Louise Wilson have made an aesthetically beautiful succession of images fall into a void of ignorance, unless you are fully conversant with some prerequisite information. I feel that, like Hepworths block of marble they have been handed Kubrick's much heralded archive held by the University of the Arts or whatever they call themselves these days, as an ongoing exercise in mutual acclaim, the outcome is beautiful but banal. I want to like this work, I will try sourcing Louisa Buck's take on the exhibition/ screening because I have found previous work by the Wilson's quite fascinating but not always immediately accessible, the hype they emerse themselves in goes some way to helping in the destruction of the subtleties of their work.