Stranger than fiction

Long, long ago in the dear, dead, days of the GLC when Ken Livingstone was going head-to-head with the Thatchistas over public transport in London, the Law Lords were asked to rule on a case brought by Bromley Council. Bromley – an outer suburban borough with no tube stations - wanted to prevent money raised by local taxation being used to subsidise London’s bus and tube fares under Ken’s ‘Fares Fair’ policy. The urban myth then arose that one of the Law Lords – a man who had never in his entire life previously used public transport – felt impelled (in the interests of justice) to make a bus journey so that he could experience first-hand just what all the fuss was about. He therefore wandered out of the Palace of Westminster and strolled along the road until he came to a bus stop. After only a few minutes’ wait, along came a large red double-decker omnibus and his lordship duly stepped on board.
“Sloane Square, please, my good man,” he said to the bus driver. History does not record the driver’s reply but it was believed to have involved both sex and travel.

I recalled this anecdote last Wednesday evening as I waited for the 319 bus at the stop in (of all places) Sloane Square. I easily resisted the temptation to say, “Streatham, please, my dear old thing,” when the bus came. My advantage over the anecdotal peer of the realm was confined to knowing the route of the 319. It does, in fact, wend its way down the Kings Road, across Battersea Bridge and onward to SW16 via Clapham Junction. Fact versus fiction; now hold that thought while I elaborate...

I was in the square because I had just been to a performance of ‘The Heretic’ at the Royal Court Theatre. This is a really good play by Richard Bean. Juliet Stevenson plays Dr Diane Cassell, a climate scientist teaching at a northern university. Johnny Flynn plays Ben, one of her students and James Fleet is the Professor – Diane’s venal boss and erstwhile lover. Diane is a climate-change sceptic. Her expertise is changes in sea-level and as far as she can ascertain there haven’t been any in recent years – well none that can be linked to climate-change that is. And please note, ‘Climate-change’ is that thing we used to call Global Warming. Terminology matters, you can’t be too careful. Diane explains that changes in sea-level are difficult to monitor because the land against which the sea is measured may also be rising or falling. Her research over many years has centred on a single tree in The Maldives. Measured against this tree, she finds no evidence that sea-level is rising. Ben is impelled to ask her if she believes that anthropic climate change is occurring at all. Diane replies, “I’m a scientist. I don’t ‘believe’ in anything.” She explains that she is an empiricist. She wants conclusions that are supported by evidence. She insists on the primacy of evidence.

So that was my Wednesday evening; happily enjoying a fictional drama whose theme was the critical importance of facts. On Saturday, I went to ‘British Art Show, 7’ at the Hayward Gallery – speculatively subtitled In the Days of the Comet. The theme of this show turned out to be fiction with a capital F. It is a show of proper, invented, fiction; the Fiction of imagined histories and separate realities. In your less guarded moments you probably expect Art to be creative and Science to be factual. But science does not proceed without imagination. That’s exactly what a scientific hypothesis is; it’s an invention, a suggestion, one possible explanation. It is a proposition to be tested against facts, against reality.

‘Art’ too is a proposition about reality. Art is a created and (hopefully) creative response but unlike science it is not subject to the test of falsifiability. Refutability examines whether a theory is scientific, not whether it is true. A statement is scientific only if, were it false, then its falsehood could be demonstrated. Nothing on show In The Days of the Comet could be refuted, therefore some or indeed all of it may be true and some or all of it may be false. None of it is therefore fact and, logically, I guess, fiction is the only refuge where it can find a home. There was a time, of course, when ‘scientia’ meant knowledge and there could be no worthwhile distinction between ‘art’ and ‘science’. Leonardo practised knowledge. He didn’t confine himself to ‘Art’. But I digress…

When you enter the Comet Show, you are first pulled towards a large glass enclosure offered by Charles Avery. I found this thing puzzling and unrevealing. I was reluctant to engage with the wilful obscurity of both its construction and its content. Much more accessible was Avery’s huge and beautifully drawn representation of the arrivals quay in the harbour of his imagined island. In this work the clarity of the drawing was appropriately opposed to the unreality it depicted.

The poster item for the whole show is Roger Hiorns’ metal park bench with occasional flame and naked man. A notice on the wall reads,

“PLEASE DO NOT SIT ON THE BENCH. IT IS AN ARTWORK.”

Oh no it isn’t, it’s a park bench – any fool can see that. The main reason for not sitting on it is that the seat catches fire at random intervals. According to the A-Z Exhibitions Guide ‘Hiorns introduces objects subjected to prayer.’ Enough said, I feel. The same Guide says that ‘ Maaike Schoorel’s atmospheric figurative paintings give up their secrets slowly.’ They do this by being ‘…barely legible…’ And that much is true. I can confirm that they are barely legible. The question I have to ask is whether the image ultimately perceived is worth the effort required to obtain it?

By now I was wanting to tell some of the artists in this show that I felt patronised by the hyperbolic write-ups that accompany their simple-minded pieces. Karla Black is a case in point; downstairs she offers a mound of loose materials which, despite the claim of “…sculptures poised between fragility and robustness…” remains very obviously a pile of soil. Upstairs, her largely pink piece ‘There can be no Arguments’ is far more successful. Made from polythene, plaster powder, powder paint and thread, every aspect of this hanging communicates fragility.

Pink, white, gold and silver are used in Matthew Darbyshire’s installation An Exhibition for Modern Living. There is nothing out of place in this carefully wrought piece and walking into it is a joy. Less joyful are the overly-dark boxes you have to enter to enjoy the video pieces produced by other artists. Am I alone in thinking that Video Artists are blissfully unaware of the word ‘turgid’? Who do they think is going to lurk in airless gloom for an indefinite period watching some repetitive crap that may or may not eventually turn out to have some minor point of interest? In this regard I single-out Nathaniel Mellors as an offender. By contrast, Elizabeth Price’s User Group Disco is almost bearable and Christian Marclay’s The Clock is a triumph. Painstakingly researched and brilliantly edited this remarkable timepiece serves also to illustrate ‘the law of unintended consequences’. The re-edited fragments of movies used by Marclay become a challenging new movie in their own right and are fascinating to watch.

Upstairs again and Sarah Lucas has recycled her old nylon tights into stuffed and knotted forms that resemble mummified intestines. It’s the plinths that are interesting here; scratch-keyed concrete blocks perched on smooth bases made from mdf. And then I came to the unassuming highlight of this fictional show: The Lost Works of Johan Riding by Olivia Plender. Turns out it’s poor old Johan who’s lost, not his works. The invented history of this fictional film-maker comes alive thanks to invented research and we can enjoy the triumph of fiction presented as fact. We can only imagine the feeling of sheer release experienced by the researcher who embarks upon the task of writing their thesis using entirely imaginary sources and contrived references. So, well done them and maybe I’m an artist too. After all, I make it all up as I go along, don’t I? Does that make me an artist or do I remain the humble piss artist I’ve always been. It probably depends on whether sea-level is rising or the land is falling.

You decide.

Next week: Unexpected despot in bagging area.