Bren O’Callaghan A Runaway at the Media Circus!

Tatton Park Biennial 2010: 2 of 2

An ill wind continued to rustle through the trees. Over at the The Mercury Pool, we waited with only a handful of others for a live performance to begin alongside the ‘alien crash site’ of David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan/Plastique Fantastique The Visitation. A form of Dionysian ritual, we watched as a victim – sacrifice – host for (I’m guessing now) an inter-dimensional entity was ceremonially exorcised by tying him up, tipping a bag of flour over his head and generally appropriating the guise of a hazing ceremony at a frat house. The spoilsport horse lady took pictures, frequently blocking our view in her desire to document.

At the main house it wasn’t much better. We shuffled along with others in silence, a human ghost train that let out an occasional whimper when someone was admonished by the staff roughly every 5 minutes for something, anything, it hardly mattered anymore. A brood of giant oils clung en masse across the walls, Helen Maurer’s Light Landing all but invisible in the dim murk of an atrium, itself but a skinny, diet-lite shadow of the original, blooming Modernist chandelier that hung in Manchester Airport during my childhood.

But then, respite. Kate MccGwire’s Evacuate bursts with alarm from an oven door in the kitchens, a physical, tangible spillage of feathered scales, snake-like, holding real substance and suggestive of a composite creature formed of countless birds cooked and consumed on site, now making a magical and Phoenix-like escape. We linger, warming our hands at a work that we know is good and right, realized with stunning effect and obvious skill, able to please the art tart and casual visitor alike.

Dispirited at the lack of thought to presentation of the other works and the frankly appalling visitor treatment dished out in the main house, we sat waiting for Clara Ursitti’s ‘art taxi’, Ghost, offering a commuter ride in a rusted Nissan Sunny deliberately perfumed to emulate the lush upholstered interior of a Rolls Royce. Scheduled at weekends on a loop between the main visitor centre and the Knutsford entrance, we took our position at the labelled rank and waited. And waited. And waited. There was no car.

It was a weekend, within the dates and times of operation. If the car was broken and had been consigned to the crusher, then fair enough, but no one had thought to offer any additional signage to this effect. So we gave up, deciding to walk and exit the estate via Tatton Mere where our map assured us we would find Steve Messam’s Lily, ‘an installation of scores of floating red lilies... visible from the ground and planes flying overhead’. Well, we looked. Of giant red plastic lily pads reminiscent of Victoria amazonica, we found none.

So let’s recap. Four sheds, one broken, one boarded up. Five if you count the horse box cinema. Children scolded for clambering atop a giant polished rocking horse. Poorly executed interior installations, from drab presentation to muffled audio. An art cab that didn’t turn up. A mystery blight decimating oversized artificial flora. A tired, odorous house cluttered with chintz-encrusted crap, akin to sucking up the contents of a hoover bag; a dry boke of dead skin.

I hold no beef with the artists. The majority of work would have benefited from better maintenance, improved display, greater variety and the decision to admit a natural conclusion earlier than planned if appropriate (ice melted, car scrapped). Signage was either lacking or contradictory. At the Perspex bureau of Breda Beban’s The Endless School, a stack of participatory comment cards – the pen long since pocketed – sat before a nook stuffed with sharpened pencils beside a sign that read ‘Do Not Touch’.

I have a suggestion to make. For the next edition, pour thousands of gallons of clear resin through the chimneys to preserve the interior indefinitely, and include the attendants. Their sour-lemon snarls preserved as they float spread-eagled against the moulded ceilings. Lay off any more sheds, period. But ultimately respect the desire of a public audience to respond to unfamiliar lumps of aesthetic artifice in outdoor space and allow them to lick, kick, climb, poke, squeeze, twist, stroke and piss against them if they so desire.

Tatton Biennial, there was something between us but it's time to move on - in every sense. Let's remember the good times. Perhaps we can be friends, in time. I'll drop your CDs off soon. You can keep the duvet cover and cutlery. Let's meet two years from now and see how we get on.

Look after yourself.

Tatton Park Biennial 2010: 1 of 2

The first Tatton Park Biennial in 2008 took me by surprise. I’d expected a pleasant if undemanding day out and found myself chomping through a brilliantly curated chocolate box of largely conceptual work that punctured the landscape and soaked through the prim, starched handkerchief of the Tatton estate, now sopping with art-berry juice. In short, it was a helluva debut. I became a loud and proud Tatton fan, trumpeting their achievement during beer-addled conversations and marking my mental diary two years hence, waiting for the Circus of Curiosities to return to town.

I couldn’t pick a favourite then or now, but particularly memorable were Nicky Coutts A Tower in the Minds of Others (Argos-inspired experimental architecture as stacked garden sheds formed a domestic pagoda), Heather & Ivan Morrison’s I am so sorry. Goodbye. (Escape Vehicle number 4), a Chestnut-shingled space capsule piloted by an elderly volunteer sat at an iron stove, or the impulse to scribble a Christmas want-list as I stared covetously at Paulette Phillips Walking Fern; a half-dozen kinetic, solar powered robo-plants that scuttled and twitched across the dry Rose Pool waiting for the clouds to pass overhead.

The gilded humility of Jo Coupe
Rarefied (Phalaenopsis lobii), billed as a solid gold orchid located somewhere within the conservatories saw visitors attempting to hunt out a jewel encrusted triffid, most unaware that it was in fact a tiny, wilted corpse resting between pots, not much bigger than a wad of spat-out gum. Oh, and who could forget the deliciously creepy Nest of the Skeletons, a video work by Tessa Farmer and Sean Daniels placed beneath a dripping canopy in the Paxton Fernery, a nasty, fictional document of malevolent fairies as they ripped apart wasps and harvested the flesh of the forest.

Some friends and I struck out for the 2010 edition at the weekend, me sat in the back of the car banging on like a love-struck fanboy at the treats that awaited us. Having parked up and marched through the forest, we hastened to the gardens, our mind-pants moist with desire. First up, Justin Houldsworth’s 4m-tall Two Million & 1AD, an experimental ‘fossilisation machine’. It looked a lot like three big water tubs with a handle and no obvious purpose. As others drew near, a child asked her parent, “What does it do?” Not everyone is here for the art alone. That’s the beauty of outdoor exhibition, bringing content to diverse and wide-ranging audiences. Arrive for a picnic, leave with an appetite.

“I don’t know love,” her Dad responded. They stare for a moment longer and move on. My friend pumps the handle for a bit and gets bored. This one is no easy-in, and although I love the idea it needs greater visual and conceptual transparency. Who knew you could make a fossil from scratch? What is the process involved? For that family, for many others, and for me, it will remain a mystery. We decide not to be too negative and walk on. Whoaa, Nelly. A giant, Harryhausen-scale Rocking Horse emerges from behind a clump of trees, mounted by two laughing girls, giddy with excitement. It is Marcia Farquhar’s The Horse is a Noble Animal.

A woman strides over to them and tells the children to get off, dismount, it is not for touching. She says she would like to ride it herself but sorry, no, it’s for their own safety, now get off. The girls and their parents are acquiescent and shamefully climb down. They leave. perhaps back to their car. I sense tears. The woman strides off (we later find that she is an associate with a group of performance artists appearing that day), smug in the knowledge that she has intervened in protection of an artwork that positively yells TOUCH ME, as if some joker had glued a pound coin to the floor and a local bobby ticked off those attempting to prise it up for attempted theft.

Elsewhere upon the trail, we find sheds. Lots of them. Nicky Coutt’s pagoda would seem to have begun and ended this route, but no. It was an ellipsis… more to come. Fiona Curran’s This time next year things are going to be different is a splintered residence reminiscent of Dorothy’s farmhouse that appears to have landed in the tree canopy. I liked it, but no lasting reason to dawdle. Jamie Shovlin’s Rough Cut/Cut Rough (Hiker Meat) promised a sinister dwelling with flickering light and sound of distress emanating from within. No such luck. We spied playback equipment through the window, but it wasn’t working.

Our hopes rose with Jem Finer’s Spiegelei, more off-the-shelf garden storage albeit punctured by a giant ball of stainless steel that offered an inverted camera-obscura. But then came Neville Gabie A Weight of Ice Carried from the North for You, one of the star attractions of the programme, two tons of ice from Greenland transported to Tatton and housed within a glass refrigerated unit that harvests power from solar panels. Instead it was boarded up with insulatory material, a sign explaining that the ice was melting faster than expected in the Summer heat and that it was only revealed once a day at noon for a short period.

As we stood pulling sulking faces for the camera, another parent strode over confidently with his children, read the sign, chose to ignore it and lifted the padding away to let them look inside. We took the opportunity to peek too. The ice was significantly diminished, but there was still a decent sized block. I felt it would have been preferable to allow the work to melt and accept nature’s influence as part of the natural cycle of the project, instead of dishing up a measly and arbitrary viewing once per day. Display a puddle by all means, but wrapping it up like that seemed futile and failed to respect the generosity of the viewer. The fridge didn’t work! Come out with your hands up, smiling.

Part 2 of 2: it gets worse...

Joana Vasconcelos

An enforced stopover in Lisbon due to the volcanic death-cloud leering over Northern Europe resulted in a visit to the Berardo Museum, the Portuguese equivalent of the Saatchi Gallery. It was here I was fortunate to stumble across the best solo exhibition I think I’ve ever seen: a kaleidoscopic retrospective by local artist Joana Vasconcelos. Exploring the warren of rooms in this mammoth bunker of a building felt like tumbling vertically through a carnival train, accented by electric lights, vibrant pools of colour and the smash-ping-hum of madcap installations, both conceptual in origin but also beautiful and fun .

Vasconcelos addresses the immediacy of the Ready-Made object and Pop-Art glamour, reinterpreting and subverting use as she dances between Duchamp and Warhol in her mass appropriation of the everyday. Streams of children and families led the way, prompting me to wonder if I was queuing for a giant ball pool instead of an exhibition, a clue to the contrary being in the huge chandelier formed of small tampons trailing a pubescent fringe of string (The Bride). Not at all crude but an elegant, bleached-bone centrepiece hinting at female objectification.

The first of many jaw-dropping moments hit as I stood facing the rainbow-spew glory of Contamination. This tactile, patchwork sprawl of stitched fabric, knitting, crochet and appliqué adopts the seemingly benign form of a tentacular creature that stretches arms, legs and other sticky-out bits through entire rooms and the upper levels of the building. It is both inert and biologicial, reminiscent of coral and sea anemones, clad in fabric sample scales, dotted with jewelled insects, children’s toys, sequins, pom-poms, wrapped in grinning cartoon beach towels and sprouting stuffed stamens and stingers.

A riot of colour and texture, it was almost too much to absorb, the eye unable to grasp either beginning or end in a single glance. Quick to follow came further fantastical attractors, from a wind-tunnel hairdryer corona (Spin), plaited hair guide ropes (One Way) and a mannequin layered in blousy fabrics winched high and slam-dropped to the ground (Burka). Three giant, glittering jewels of edible colour and intricate patterns hang suspended within a velvet-lined room to the sound of traditional Portuguese Fado music, which on closer inspection are revealed to be made from melted and reshaped plastic cutlery (Red/Gold/Black Independent Heart).

In Garden of Eden, patrons stumbled through a dark maze of kitsch, fibre optic flowers gathered en masse to form a labyrinth of illuminated kitsch, gently buzzing at a low frequency as if ink-blot bees hovered drunkenly within reach. But it was Meeting Point that had me grinning from ear to ear: classic design chair styles had been shorn of legs and attached to a roundabout that required riders to run alongside and jump aboard, then twirled in collaboration with other users. Joana Vasconcelos succeeds in creating a walk-in wardrobe of homespun delight.

Joana Vasconcelos ‘Netless / Sem Rede’ is at the Berardo Museum inside Lisbon’s Belem Cultural Centre until 18^th May 2010.