So, I thought, well they're meeting at a bar in Covent Garden and then reassembling outside the Hayward Gallery at 2pm and they'll be operating on gay time so don't expect punctuality and the fact that I'm ten minutes late won't be an issue.
Wrong. I was the last to arrive for the uk.glb visit to the Anish Kapoor exhibition. It was Chris's idea to go and Adrian's idea to post the notion to the NewsGroup and hats off and cheers to the two of them for it was a brilliant afternoon out. The rest of the crew included Phil, and Gary, James and Ryan who seemed to form a social unit and Tom who was more on his own and avoiding talking about an exam the following day.
What can you say about the works? Well go and see them for yourselves. I couldn't say whether they were sculptures, installations, artworks or what. They were simply an experience. Take the first room. Three works.
The first My Body Your Body is on the wall to your right as you enter the gallery space. A first sight just a deep, dark violet panel on the wall. Except that, as you look at it, strange things happen. Firstly, it seems to suck you in - like you are looking into infinity. Then, you realise that you aren't looking at a flat surface and that, instead, you are looking through a frame into a space beyond. Then you see that, within the violet infinity, there is another, darker object that becomes more apparent if you move to one side of the work to change your perspective. Then, if you stare long enough into the void, suddenly the colour jumps out towards you. Already, I'm giggling a lot and everyone else is enjoying themselves too. It's not going to be a po-faced gallery visit.
Next up, Iris, a large concave indentation in a false gallery wall lined with a mirror-like metallic surface, introduces a Hall of Mirrors like motif that will return throughout the afternoon. Again, it's playful and Adrian and Chris joke about having one in their flat and wonder about the bulge in the wall of the woman next door.
And the third is a metallic, mirrored bagel-like shape on the floor in the centre of which is a hole down which you cannot see. A gallery attendant tells us that the well is 2 metres deep. It's enough to get my and Chris's vertigo primed. And we're still giggling and enjoying ourselves.
In the next room, more forms and now colour. One yellow piece and one blue, darkest of dark, royal blues. This latter, entitled Untitled 1990, reveals another trick. The two forms are like giant cones. By placing yourself in the right spot in front of the piece, you are equidistant from all of its surfaces. Consequently, when you make a sound, the returning echo arrives from all points at the same moment and your head feels like it is as big as the universe created inside the violet space of My Body Your Body. It's an effect I remember from the summer of 1974 when I worked with some students from the Architectural Association building geodesic domes on the Marquis of Beaulieu's estate. Stand in the epicentre of a geodesic dome and speak. It'll blow your mind as we used to say in those long ago times. Back in the gallery, we are all still enjoying ourselves. And so are all the other people in the gallery. There's wide-eyed childlike wonder wherever you look.
In many of the works, like the Light Dark series and Untitled 1998, you look through shaped apertures into hollowed chambers where any lines and corners have been smoothed away. The space bounded by the external, clearly delineated, three dimensional exterior seems too small to contain the free form inner space of light with no perspective.
So, the exhibition is about playing with space and perception. It's like you have become a child again, experiencing the world anew because the rules you have learnt have been dismissed. It's about the most hallucinatory experience most of us have had without chemical intervention since we were 3 months old. As I pointed out to Tom, if you look at the gallery floor, it is made of wooden strips. We know that that creates parallel lines and yet we see the lines as converging. That illusion we interpret as perspective because we accept that convention in order to navigate our way through a perilous world. Similarly, we anchor the boundaries of our space through the corners. We exist in a three dimensional world. It is at the corners where those three directions of length, breadth and depth are made manifest. Take those clues away and we have to reinvent our world again.
It's a wonderful journey of exploration. My favourite experience was a large double
mirror work in one of the corridors which took the hall of mirrors theme to extreme
lengths. In the dead centre, you remain as you expect yourself to be but around the
world shatters into extraordinary patterns of colour. Move slightly to one side and
your own image begins to explode. It's weird and absorbing and terrifying all at the
same time. At one point, I thought a miracle had occurred and the lens had
transformed me into a good-looking nineteen year old. But no. It was just the
reflection of James standing next to me.
And in the final room At the Edge of the World II takes many of the trompe-l'oeil effects and auditory illusions and combines them stunningly in a massive, dark crimson, bagel-like trumpet suspended from the ceiling so that, this time, infinity is above you.
It is wonderful. Become as a child again. Go see it and explore the universe.
Well, we'd had over an hour and a half in the Gallery. From there it was but a
short walk to drinks in front of the Festival Hall. Sun, conversation, the Thames,
fresh (?) air. We talked for a good few hours and the words Arsenal,
Newcastle and F A Cup were notable only by their absence.
It was good. Even if I did
find myself telling anecdotes that involved Ross
quite a lot. Was I intimidated by Adrian and Chris's relationship? Or is it just that
he really is a large part of my life still?
Gary, James and Ryan drifted off after a while to go visit MOMI. Tom stayed longer but the exigencies of railway timetables drew him away eventually. Adrian, Chris, Phil and I went and ate at Le Dôme at the bottom end of Charing Cross Road before wending our separate ways.
And, coming home, I've had my first summer moment of the year. I've been out
all afternoon, I've enjoyed myself, I've eaten out and I've arrived home in the
late evening happy and in the light.