Little Black Book of Art

The current global financial situation combined with the decline in property values, has meant that gallerists and curators have benefited from being able to hire some spectacular venues in London that would normally be unavailable, or would be in the process of being renovated by developers.

One such building is the former home of the Sierra Leonean Embassy, located at 33 Portland Place. This huge, Robert Adam townhouse was used by the African country’s diplomats from 1954 to 1998, before descending into substantial disrepair when the country’s exiled government ran out of money and no funds were available to run the London high commission. It has now fallen into the hands of a British entrepreneur who acquired the property under dubious circumstances (click HERE for article) and hires the venue out for film location, parties (namely by an exclusive swinger’s club), and this week, as an exhibition space.

This strikingly beautiful, shabby-chic Georgian residence couldn’t be a better setting for ‘The Embassy’, a site-specific project involving a number of artists exploring the abuse of power and its effects. 

The project is a collaboration from two galleries, produced and curated by Alex Dellal (20 Hoxton Square Projects) and Xerxes Cook (Zoom Art Projects). 

The idea for the show was initially formed after Dellal learnt how certain embassies are now using parts of their premises to promote their national artists. Alex wanted “to do the exact opposite by inviting artists from all over to recreate the national identity of an anonymous country”. Instead of having an embassy defined by artists’ nationality, the artists would define the embassy’s nationality.  

Dellal and Cook invited emerging artists Marco Brambilla, Terence Koh, Rosey Chan, Tom Gallant, Alastair Mackie, Oliver Clegg, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Bruce French, Henry Hudson, Michael Lisle-Taylor, Laurence Owen, Olympia Scarry, Karim Rabik and Hugo Wilson to take inspiration from the building and it’s former owners, whose country has a façade of democracy, but in fact whose political history depicts a quite different story with abuses of power, corruption and financial crisis.

The result is a breathtaking pop-up exhibition, less than a couple of minutes away from the madness of Frieze in Regents Park, and I’d say one of the main highlights in London Art week and a must-see show.

JB Pelham PR clearly did a good job on the preview night as the building was rammed with people desperately trying to get in and join the likes of Alexander McQueen, Meredith Ostrom, Jo Wood, Charlotte Casiraghi, Lilly Allen, Anouk Lepere, Jefferson hack, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Valentino, Andy Wong, Charlotte Dellal, Marc Quinn, Evgeny Lebedev and Oswald Boateng.

Guests were all floating around the building admiring works who spoke of themes relevant to the mismanagement of a country - greed, egotism, repression, theocracy, malnutrition, gluttony, tyranny and geography.

There were also performance artists who were hired for the evening to assume the characters of diplomats, busily and noisily tearing through the space on official business.

I went to see ‘The Embassy’ in the full light of day, after visiting Frieze a second time round. Every year I go to Frieze, full of expectation, hoping that I am going to see something that is going to blow me away and I always leave feeling a bit disappointed. However, my spirits lifted once I visited Alex and Xerxes’  offering.

On entering the building, I was greeted by Tyrone Wood (son ‘of’) who works with Xerxes at Zoom Art Projects, and handed a beautiful duck-egg blue catalogue with details of the 15 or so artists whose work was on display.

Ok, ok…so initially, I was a bit skeptic – some may say its easy to put on a show like this when one has family money and connections, but it was the informative and slickly designed catalogue forced me to take a closer look.  The intro by Xeres was enlightening and well written, coupled with photographs of the work by Igor Tolstoy – no doubt a descendant of the famous author, knowing that ‘crew’.

I was totally awe-struck by this site-specific, theatrical exhibition staged by two young men who are still very new to the art world.  The show, which mixes painting, sculpture and installation work, has been extremely well curated by Alex and Xerxes and engages perfectly with the extraordinary history of its location.

It is true to say that the stunning, multi-floor premises helps with the general sense of awe one has when viewing the exhibition, but it doesn’t detract from the work which is clever and engaging.

The painting below is Wolfe Lenkiewicz’s (b.1966) ‘Lincoln Eagle’ and is a modern-day spin on a Baroque allegory showing a plane-crashing into Lincoln riding an eagle with the face of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. Lenkiewicz’s canvases are often filled with a cast of characters, and a variety of symbols and icons taken from environments as diverse as Greek mythology and 1950’s pop culture.

Former serviceman  Michael Lisle-Taylor’s (b.1669) practice is predominantly sculpture based, but it also consists of modifying emotively charged found objects, already heavily emblazoned with the marks of their own history, such as his work below -‘Tournament of the Dirty Nurse’. This piece is an ornately embroidered boxing ring showcased in one of the building’s dark, back rooms still covered in the blood, sweat and tears from bouts that have taken place within it.

His other works – ‘Crossing the Line’ and ‘Black Night Squared Away’ are from an ongoing series of ceremonial uniforms modified into garments of restraint which explore the culture of the military.

A ‘history’ painting by Oliver Clegg (b.1980), littered with contrast, on a series of 10 old school desktops that have been taken apart and reassembled, takes pride of place in one of the side rooms on the ground floor. No attempt has been made to conceal the scratches and marks on the furniture’s surface – scuffs which hint at previous narratives in scholastic settings.

Laurence Owen’s (b.1984) military portraits of individuals with scrubbed out faces are depicted as shown in the painting below. It forms part of a group of 13 nameless pieces (only a serial number distinguishes them), that force the viewer the look at what the portrait represents, rather than the portrait itself.

Alistair Mackie’s (b.1977) model of Capitol House is made out of mud, straw and horse manure (an ancient building material still used in parts of African and the Indian subcontinent today), and explores how man interacts with nature and our often false ideas of ‘progress’. Alistair decided to depict The Capitol building using it as an emblem for the Western democratic system as a whole – one we have been conditioned to believe represents a ‘civilized world’.

Below is a still from Marco Brambilla’s (b.1964) chilling ‘Voice of God’ – a mock propaganda film which depicts a nostalgic view of idol worship and looks at contemporary society’s obsession with media. Brambilla’s powerful work shows documentary footage of 1930’s and 40’s fascist leaders Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin and their adoring publics, seamlessly layered and montaged together to the rhythm of a generic military anthem.

Ronnie Yarisal & Katja Kublitz’s (b.1981 and 1978) humorous, mechanized contraption entitled ‘Corny’ (see below), represents the libido and repressed sexuality of a country’s people – the absurd image of a bobbing coconut, perpetually driven by the wheel of a futile machine, intermittently rises to complete the word ‘HORNY’.

Other works include a set of sculptured lungs by Hugo Wilson (b.1982) in three stages of the pulmonary cycle – shock, agitation and panic entitled ‘Hyperventilation‘. To create this piece, a method called corrosion casting was used, a technique traditionally employed by the medicine profession to achieve specimens. During this extraordinary process, resin is injected into empty cavities within organs - spaces usually reserved for blood and air. The organs are then placed in acid for two weeks, which cases the flesh to slowly disintegrate leaving the remaining resin creating an exact copy of the previously negative spaces inside. Wilson took this process one step further by suspending the resin inside beautifully pristine glass vitrines.

There is also a set of photographs by Henry Hudson (b.1982) on display. These are caricatured portraits, one in black and the other in white, illustrating the transgression from purity to sin. The images depict real-life tableaux’s which portray the timeless cycle of corruption and lawlessness.  Hudson uses the same distinctive style favoured by Keith Haring and Boo Ritson, where painting the actual subject matter is used to blur the lines of illustration and reality.

Visit : www.20hoxtonsquare.com for more information.

The Embassy runs from 15 – 18 October 2009 @ 33 Portland Place, London W1B 1QU