Olivia Plender
Marabouparken, Stockholm, Sweden
Olivia Plender’s ’Information, Education, Entertainment’ references broadcasting executive John Reith’s maxim about what the BBC should provide. On entering the exhibition the viewer is transported into the world of studio television through a number of set designs within which the exhibition unfolds. The installation consists of mounted wall structures in textiles reflecting both the colour codes of TV test images and the padded, sound-proofed walls of the studio. Here Plender dismantles the popular media’s conspicuous construction of ’the artist’ figure, with some of the works focusing on the educational BBC programme Monitor, broadcast during the 1950s and 60s.
’Private View’ was the title of an episode of Monitor in which four promising artists’ careers are described, all of which have had little impact since. We hear of their economic struggles and sacrifices, grievances about feeling like an outsider, and other stubborn truths of the trade. Plender has used the sound from the programme and coupled it with her own shots of contemporary London, including glossy Tate media events, posh Notting Hill facades, still lifes from painting studios, and scenes from life-drawing classes. Meanwhile the voices describe their London lives, mainly played out in the gritty bohemia of 1960s’ Notting Hill.
The Masterpiece (2003-) is Plender’s ongoing comic strip named after the Emile Zola book inspired by the life of Paul Cezanne. Plender’s comic strip is made by sourcing and copying pulp images – the posters, films and comic strips of the ’40s – to tell the story of an artist’s attempt to create the ultimate masterpiece. In the latest issue of this series, ’The Road to Ruin (for Öyvind Fahlström)’ (2006), the protagonist is about to win an award (a thinly disguised Beck’s Futures, the annual Turner-alternative at the ICA, reimagined here as ’Buck’s Art Competition’). The narrative follows Nick grappling with fame and fortune before finally being turned into a walking advertisment for Buck’s, whilst the board of the company itself is contemplating the pros and cons of sponsoring art. The last strip depicts a drunken surgeon operating on the artist, who’s been involved in a possibly self-induced car crash (the morals of the tale are replicated by Plender from the temperance movement of the 19th century). Figures and details from this latest issue have been cut out, blown up and layered in the corner of a room – like a theatrical Fahlström installation that bleeds across the gallery. Here it turns into a more televisual 1970s set design in which you are invited to be seated, to watch Plender’s recently re-edited Ken Russell in conversation with Olivia Plender (2005-2007), in which Plender interrogates the infamous promoter of artistic genius, asking for the director’s motives behind his actions on and off set.
’Information, Education, Entertainment’ throws the viewer into Plender’s intertwining of Romantic ideas concerning artistic genius and their contemporary persistence. Plender is eager to monitor whether the cultural construct of the artist changes to reflect our time, and questions what forces such changes, but I wonder if (in time) artists - including Olivia Plender - can begin to operate outside of the annoying margins granted to contemporary artists by the popular press. I hope to see a proper survey played out in that realm itself.
Stella d'Ailly
Responses
There are no responses yet for this article.
