Issue 7/
WINTER 2006
Map MagazineBull and Bear : Review
G39, Cardiff
Ruth Beale finds explorations of masculine fantasies in Wales
Bermingham and Robinson profess a certain frustration with contemporary life. In contrast to the optimistic and futuristic expectations of their childhood, there is no solve-all Blue Peter food pill or Tomorrow's World jet pack; just the same problems, anxieties and difficult relationships - war, famine and tragedy. Yet we are still being peddled the same impossible dreams by car adverts and TV property shows. In direct contrast to the high-budget car advert fantasies, it is the garages of a particular group of British men - places for working, tinkering and hiding from wives - that provide inspiration for the first work in Bermingham and Robinson's show Bull and Bear at g39 in Cardiff. Upended workbenches lean against the walls on the ground floor, meticulously covered in line drawings of a car pile-up, outlined in the style of a Haynes manual. The paint-splashed surfaces almost obscure tyres and bonnets, but do not hide the implied intensive labour. A parallel is drawn between hobbyist and artist, garage and studio, where a certain kind of hard graft is expected and valued. By working collaboratively, Bermingham and Robinson seem to put themselves through a deliberate process of selfexamination. They frequently make thought and development processes explicit in their presentation and working methods, almost involuntarily creating symbolic self-portraits as they seek to define who they are and what they are doing. Eschewing an egotistical outlook, they choose instead to freeze-frame everyday symbols of work, play, and masculinity. But there is an undercurrent of destruction and chaos in each of their chosen snap-shots. In 'The Future Will Be Little Different From the Past', a game of 'Space Invaders' is depicted on what appear to be five canvases. On closer inspection they prove to be handsewn embroideries, each pixel now a crossstitch. Bringing a nostalgic smile to the face of anyone for whom a BBC computer was once the cutting edge of technology, the embroideries are transformed into considered objects by the repetitive action of sewing - not feminised somehow; just a more affectionate and gentler breaking-down of masculinity. 'Studies of a Chair in Motion' shows a plastic chair spinning in stop-frame animation across a series of graphite rubbings on A4 paper. It resonates with mundanity, but also with an adolescent fantasy of throwing a chair across a classroom in frustration. This closely controlled violence is depicted in an impassive, non-expressive style that gives nothing away about the hand of the maker. The work seems to undermine the aggressive connotations of stock market stereotypes Bull and Bear through careful craftsmanship and simplicity. These devices are used instead to express uncertainty, and rein in the chaos and destruction of market and world forces for closer scrutiny and consideration. Ruth Beale is a London-based artist, and curator of Aurora Projects.
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Show one of each - season of solo exhibitions, G39, Cardiff
Bull & Bear - Exhibition catalogue 2006
Waiting for Superman - Gordon Dalton
"...when I got back home tonight, I stepped through the door and over my messes; I fell on to the couch and into a sleep and then into a dream, and I dreamed that I was back in Minneapolis, back next to the corn fields. I dreamed I had taken a glass elevator to the top of one of the city's green glass skyscrapers, to the very top floor, and I was running around that floor from one face of the skyscraper to another, frantic, looking through those big sheets of glass - trying to find a way to protect Superman."¹
Whilst I am averse to quotation, this paragraph, taken from Douglas Coupland's excellent 1994 novel, Life after God, came to mind when asked to write a second text about the work of Richard Robinson & Rob Bermingham. The first text had served as an introduction as they made their collaborative practice public through large billboard posters, scruffy studio assemblages and humorous open house invitations to see what seemed like their spewing forth on a range of subjects from in-house jokes, music, celebrity and their daily routine of being an artist.
This waste disposal method of working had created a space where the pair hoped to work in a slightly more tender way, whilst still commenting on their daily lives and the 'complexities of soul searching for a generation without God'. The above quotation evokes that space, in its melancholic reference to a lonesome, tiresome life; the wishful think of somewhere else, somewhere of your childhood. There is an aching juxtaposition of nature and modern technology and the frantic realisation of being lost somewhere in the middle. Finally, and most tenderly, there is the futile masculine attempt to do the right thing by protecting Superman, the one person out there who should be saving the day. Coupland, like Robinson & Bermingham seem to be asking if he can't save us then who will? That this question is asked simultaneously from the perspective of an adolescent boy, with his superhero worship, a utopian dreamlike state and that of a miserable 30-something man makes it all the more longing.
For anyone who has seen their previous shambolic outpourings, Robinson & Bermingham's new work may come as something as a surprise and perhaps, a little disappointment. Gone are the random scrawled notes to each other, the perverse references to something that happened the night before. The humour that was so apparent previously has been replaced with an almost remorseful air. Instead of being witness to camaraderie and rowdiness, the viewer is now party (sic) to the morning after, the sickly paranoia that creeps up on you after a particularly long weekend.
This temporary remorse displays itself through a series of almost tombstone-like displays. Two different sized tabletops are up ended, perhaps representing that school is definitely out; a sly self-portrait and a bleak nod to the World Trade centre. These themes are continued elsewhere with a repeated motif of a school chair tumbling across the room alluding to the haunting image of the Falling Man.² This repeat to fade tactic is employed again through a series of cross-stitch panels of the videogame Space Invaders. Again, a wasted but much missed youth is cross-referenced with the artists poking fun at their boy's own image, along with the fears of an unknown attacker.
Finally a dingy basement contains another potential self-portrait in the form of two coats hung casually. This perhaps acts as a knowing signature in a similar way we have become accustomed to the suits of Beuys and the hat and coat of Kounellis, with their ability to create both a fictional identity and also act as a mark of authenticity.
This apparent shift is not a wholesale shift in focus, rather a more black humoured edit and intentionally serious stopgap. This seriousness is deployed by Robinson & Birmingham almost as a misleading tactic. It acts as a bookend to their previous work in that it provides parameters between the carefree summer days of their youth, where fears of a nuclear strike, although frightening, seemed a million years away, and the day to day drudgery of modern, soon to be middle aged life where all those apocalyptic fears are real, but you just cant be bothered to get out of bed to worry about them all.
Robinson & Bermingham are, in their own futile way, trying to help Superman save the world. Their work offers the bleak hope to people 'That they should try to hold on the best they can, he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything. It's just too heavy for Superman to lift.' ³
¹ Life after God. Douglas Coupland. Published by Simon & Schuster 1994
² The Falling Man refers a photograph by Richard Drew of a man believed to be Jonathan Briley falling from the World Trade Centre during the 9/11 attacks. The image was only printed once in American newspapers following public outcty. Drew comented Drew commented about the varying reactions, saying, "This is how it affected people's lives at that time, and I think that is why it's an important picture. I didn't capture this person's death. I captured part of his life. This is what he decided to do, and I think I preserved that" http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0110/drew.htm
³ Waiting for Superman, written and performed by The Flaming Lips. From the album The Soft Bulletin, Warner Bros. Records, 1999
Gordon Dalton is an artist, critic and curator based in Cardiff, Wales.
www.gordondalton.co.uk
Metro - 04/09/07
In His Image - Review
Garej, Cardiff
In His Image sees Bermingham and Robinson - regular fixtures on the Cardiff art scene - collaborating once again, each bringing their own influence to this unique partnership. One painter, one sculptor and unlimited access to the Garej Art Gallery for one week have transformed the space into a miniature aircraft hanger. Bermingham and Robinson are renowned for their off-kilter looks at the incessant need for humans to tinker and the development of shed culture; they revel in such things as kit cars, or in this case the beautifully crafted model Spitfires that adorn the space. Each Spitfire has been constructed from a single reclaimed pub sign; every component marked out, cut out and then assembled.
What's most fascinating is that the leftover scrap remains as intricate as the finished planes. The duo have been meticulous to the point that the remnants of pub signs mirror the plans on the wall - there's no excess or waste, the artists have only taken what was needed. The process has been catalogued, with plans for you to make your own plane adorning the walls. Creating art that can inspire and be shared, Bermingham and Robinson's ideas incite some very welcome playfulness.
Brodie Lyon
