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Free speechOFAR APRIL 19TH 2003 |
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Supported by:
NEW AGENDA ARTS TRUST
Ofar April 19TH 2003
Ofar is literally the outsider of the contemporary British art scene. His unofficial performance installation of ten authentic Speakers' Corner orators plus hecklers discussing art with the general public on the forecourt of the Tate Modern last summer, as well as suggesting unusual organisational skills was typical of the wit, immediacy and relevance of his work. Whereas much of his earlier painting and videos were merely informed by the theme of freedom, these later multi-media pieces have attempted to actually create a space for free expression to occur. Ofar's work is a welcome compliment to any gallery opening or exhibition. Untrained, unacknowledged and unfunded; Ofar is nevertheless motivated and clearly inspired - a rare phenomenon - a post-mod primitive.
Morton Crombie Dec 2002
Tony Allen's Journal
I've had the Saatchi exhibition in my diary for months. Ofar told me about it in the pub after Speakers Corner one Sunday - said I had to do it. Said it was important. I usually go along with whatever he asks me to do. He's a charmer with an uncanny instinct for a good time. It's always a hoot with Ofar and he generally pays for the drinks too.
Saturday 19th April 03
Its midday Saturday and we join the general public and view the exhibition in the gallery, leaving my ladder outside with the Evening Standard's front page nude's feature, "Is this art?" stuck to the notice board with the invitation "Discuss -2pm/3pm...."
At 2pm we could easily have spent another hour taking in the art but we knew we had a gig to do. We emerge and there's three people waiting by the stepladder and we go straight into our first session. "Did you enjoy the show?" "What was the most memorable exhibit?" "Why did you come here ?" What were your expectations?" Although not always immediately obvious our motive is simple - we genuinely want to know what people mean when they talk about art. That's not to say we're a pair of sneering Daily Mail-reading philistines. We're not. We are artist's. Ofar, among other things, is a conceptual artist and all this chat is part of his creation -his artwork - a space and an opportunity for free speech. I am a performer - part of Ofar's artwork. My job is to conduct a public meeting about the nature of life and art. I'm a militant agnostic - I don't know. I'll go further - I know I don't know. I'll argue with anybody about anything. For me and for Ofar, the art on view in Chas Saatchi's Gallery is only a catalyst to get people talking about their feelings and what they believe in. The next thing they'll be doing - with any luck - is publicly expressing themselves.
We get a steady trickle of punters. It's a broad cross-section of the populace that chance a conversation with an unlikely looking team like me and Ofar. He tends to approach single people or small groups and suggest they join him and come and listen to me. Meanwhile I alternate between holding court and barking a crowd.
When Ofar explains to people that they have been engaging with his work of art, the responses are many and mixed. One couple told us that we’d helped them focus and make sense of what they’d just seen in the gallery. Others were similarly appreciative about what we were doing, although for a small minority this information only compounds the confusion that started when they went to the gallery in the first place. Some thought we didn’t meet the criteria for art because we couldn’t be bought and exhibited or hung up in their living room. Others weren’t so sure but thought they’d better take a photo of us for posterity just in case.
There are a lot of people from the business - artists, teachers and students - interested to find out what we're about. I like this; apart from anything else there's a chance that I might learn something. I also enjoy taking the piss, and with one group I extemporise on the earlier feedback and bullshit them into believing that what we're doing is going on everywhere - outside every gallery in London there's a loudmouth up a ladder with his minder, encouraging punters to discuss the state of the nation and the meaning of art. A couple of punters take the bait and believe me, bless.
This exhibition has popular appeal and half the crowd are ordinary Jo's and regular tourists who know even less about post-mod Brit-art than I do. I am very sympathetic when a group of Midlands workmates on a day trip to London admit that they are bewildered by what they had seen. They were genuinely open to it and wanted to enjoy the show but when faced with rooms of Brit Art it just didn’t make any sense to them. None of it. They thought the fifteen-foot Australian tiger shark in formaldehyde was "a disappointment - dull, grey and very dead." “What’s the story here then? Has this Damian Hirst robbed a museum or what?” Their take on the various sheep, fish, and other severed beasts all chain-sawed up and with the segments exhibited in separate tanks was much the same. “It seems as if a lot of unnecessary work has been done by someone who’s not that interesting.” “Someone disturbed, but only mildly disturbed.” They had seen (and preferred) Gunther Von Hagens exhibition of plasticide's in Brick Lane. “He cut up bodies with a bit of flair”. “Yeah! Human beings - freaky stuff." Of the live carp, swimming round in a submerged office with a desk, a computer and (apparently) a gynaecologists examination seat, (a point that I missed). One of them said, “It reminded me of an up-market Chinese restaurant.” Of Hirst’s Hymn “It looks like a cross between the Venus De Milo and a giant teaching aid from the science museum circa 1970 – one them plastic dolls with areas of skin pulled back revealing the colon and liver etc. If it was intact and the right size it would be kitsch and highly collectable."
A sentiment I can’t argue with: “That big picture of Myra Hindley – I didn’t know until today that it was made of pixels; each one a child’s hand. But then, so what?”
Personally I share their confusion and disappointment and I shamelessly start to develop my own review of the show talking to these people; I nick their best lines and repeat them throughout the afternoon.
Not everything in this show is immediately clear. In late sixties I was technician to Gordon Yates, an unknown artist who painted canvases of coloured polka dots, dribbled rainbows and splashed abstracts; he would stick them on to old 78 record player turn-tables, up-end them and get them spinning in a dark corner of arts lab and strobe them – it caused intriguing psychedelic after-images as well as the occasional horrendous migraine. If I understand this correctly, Damian Hirst in a kitsch exercise is presenting arbitrary examples of this hippie period artwork, 35 years later but without the light show and out of context. As you’d expect they look a bit old-fashioned – like something that might be found stuck on the railings on Sunday along the Bayswater Road. The pastel spots appear again in serried ranks decorating a white sixties Mini Cooper parked halfway up a flight of stairs, echoes of an early Michael Caine film - the Italian Job.
Next is a group of people who had obviously had their minds made up for them by their dominant alpha male; they use our meeting to rebel and re-think their understanding of the exhibition. This is not uncommon, and was something we’d noticed happening previously when we worked the Tate Modern. I am always surprised when this happens, although not as much as the main man. In this case they were all agreeing with his opinion that the best thing in the show was the tank full of flies and maggots infesting a cow’s head. I simply repeated a fairly articulate appraisal that I’d just picked up from someone else and added a few embellishments of my own
“If you think about it, It’s hardly the most imaginative piece of work Damian Hirst has created. It clearly started life in the dustbin outside his studio. It would actually be difficult to stop something like that from happening.” To be honest I rather like the idea of a load of filthy flies and maggots and a cow’s head stuck in a tank in County Hall and all these art lovers standing around discussing what the artist is trying to say. He’s having a laugh, that’s what’s going on. Perhaps he’s still a kid trying to freak out the grown-ups. Perhaps his parents wouldn’t let him have a telly.
As usual a lot of people just want to see what they had read about - Tracey Emin’s bed and the various beasts in tanks of formaldehyde by Damian Hirst - and box-tick them like they would any other tourist attraction.
Two old Jewish ladies with bright red hair are quick to slag off everything about the show. It transpires that their only motive for seeing it is that they are habitual critics of ‘modern art’ and want to be able to answer “yes” when they’re asked the inevitable “Ah but have you seen it?” I rather like these wannabe brazen philistines.
One prim lady didn’t like the flies and maggots in the cow’s head, or the giant ashtray, or ‘the dirty unmade bed’. I suggested that she probably didn’t like dirt and untidiness in any context. She was surprised and agreed with me, acting as if I was a showman and I’d just pulled off a stunt of instant psychoanalysis. Incidentally Hirst’s big plastic ashtray is the size of a Jacuzzi and filled with several years’ worth of ash, butts and fag packets. As a newly converted non-smoker, I liked the propaganda value.
A woman who couldn’t think of anything she’d liked in the show, finally conceded “The butterfly valentine was nice.” She’d made a mistake. The handful of battered butterflies, flypaper stuck to a six foot heart-shaped pink valentine card, are supposed to look tortured enough for the piece to be ironic. They don’t though. They simply look a bit tatty. I told her “You’d be better off looking round a card shop.” And she agreed.
In our second stint, a female art student takes it upon herself to explain to me how there has been a return to life-like representational art in the last 10 years. She cites various exhibits in the show and suggests that the room full of engine oil, which makes for a mirror that doesn’t even blemish, epitomises this trend. Before I can put in my two pen' worth, another woman joins in and starts chatting to her. They don’t know each other but are soon having a discussion that virtually excludes me. When I’ve got over the feeling of mild rejection I muse on the fact that this style of immediate communication between complete strangers is the sort thing that usually only happens at Speakers’ Corner. Ofar returns from the snack bar with a coffee for me. Within a few minutes he has joined their conversation (the pushy charmer) and is describing how “Tony thought the Gavin Turk rough sleeper in the entrance was for real.” I did as it happens - it was actually made of bronze. Had me fooled. As did the American tourist weighed down with luggage and slumped in the other foyer. This one was made of resin.
A small crowd has now gathered and I take the opportunity to announce that the most popular exhibit (according to my unscientific survey of spending a couple of hours asking punters to name their favourite) is Dead Dad by Ron Mueck - a life-like if half-size nude figure also in resin. The two women agree with me and point out that it exemplifies that same accurate repro-mode. Ofar intervenes. "Dead Dad is old hat - yesterday. We need to focus on what is happening now?" He's right of course, Dead Dad was first shown in the Sensation Exhibition in 1997! So what is happening now? Ofar, exasperated, makes his last contribution before walking off.
"We are of course; you pillock!"
And he's right of course.
Text by Tony Allen
New Agenda Arts Trust
Future dates to be announced
copyright 2003 © The
Satchi Gallery all rights reserved
