Mister Trippy

Catching the opening performance of Shaun Caton’s ‘…netherwhat…’ at the Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery (1 October) I could have imagined I’d walked into a time warp had I not been in Redchurch Street… I hadn’t seen Caton do a performance since the 1980s, and I understand he’s done nothing in London for the past 15 years, but he seemed to be picking up from where I’d left off with him. Every Caton performance may be unique but he also runs through endless variations on the same theme in his shamanistic rituals; and here he was on the 2 October 2009 with a noised up soundtrack splattering red paint over toy babies he’d strung up from the ceiling. It looked similar, not identical, to the last live action I’d seen him perform more than 20 years before. I braved the gallery, although most of the audience watched through a window from the street outside. Sample conversation: “Shall we go in?” ‘No, it goes on for three hours, we can come back later…” I certainly didn’t hear ‘culture’ talk in Redchurch Street in the 1980s, back then it was full of light industry, there weren’t galleries and art groupies strung out along its narrow pavements as is the case today.

Directly opposite the Shaun Caton shindig, Artwars Project Space was hosting the private view for Martin Sexton’s Spectres Of Marx, another time warp; or rather, a case of the changing times making what the art whores of the yBa and its heirs considered to be deeply unfashionable, appear as timely as it ever was. Sexton’s exhibition is inspired by the last words of Wilhelm Reich: “Comrades! Even now I am not ashamed of my communist past.” So Marx, Reich, sexual repression, orgone energy, the credit crunch, deconstruction and Jacques Derrida are what Sexton was confronting us with. I walked through the door and the first thing I saw was art critic Peter Suchin, who’d also been very much in evidence at the Gustav Metzger opening a couple of days earlier, standing beneath a red bust of Marx. Sexton himself was wandering around playing the role of genial host, and Douglas Park was manning the bar.

Down the road at the A Foundation Galleries on Arnold Circus, Arts Catalyst was hosting the private view for Interspecies: Artists Collaborating With Animals. This art and science hook-up also very much went against the grain of yBa orthodoxy – although personally I was much more excited by the anti-gravity experiments Arts Catalyst was involved in, than in failing to see Kira O’Reilly’s durational live action Falling Asleep With A Pig. In the area set aside for them, I could see no sign of either the artist or the animal that were supposedly sharing a confined space for a couple of days. I also expected to see Mark Waugh of the A Foundation and Rob La Frenais of Arts Catalyst, but in fact saw no one I knew. I did take in some stuffed pigeons courtesey of Beatriz da Costa on the A Foundation roof before moving on to 22 Calvert. This is the UK‘s first not-for-profit foundation dedicated to promoting art from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was set up earlier this year by Nonna Materkova, and I went to the opening of its third show, Re-imagining October, curated by Mark Nash and Isaac Julien.

The focus of Re-imagining October seemed to be contemporary Russian film addressing the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 (and yes, this was a revolution, but a bourgeois and not a proletarian uprising). The work on display looked interesting, but it was impossible to judge properly because the place was so crowded. Instead of worrying about the art (as I’ve indicated, mainly moving image), I chatted to the likes of Ilze Black, Zinovy Zinik, Ilona Cheshire and Mark Rappolt. Alongside the likes of 176 and Raven Row, 22 Calvert itself seems to represent part of a trend for well endowed private foundations to take over at least some of the functions of public arts organisations in London. It is a world away from the tumbledown galleries around the corner in Redchurch Street. If you haven’t already been to 22 Calvert, both the show and the space look like they’re well worth checking out.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!