Siobhán Hapaska
This is an exhibition of four objects, all quite large, all immaculately crafted. One is a hyper-realistic painted fibreglass figure called Saint Christopher (1995). Saint Christopher used to be the patron saint of travellers but was recently decanonised on the grounds that he possibly didn't exist. 'Saint Christopher's Legless' is the overall title of the exhibition, and the sculpture is indeed legless; they end just above the knee, not in a metaphorical cut but in realistic rounded stumps. The figure sits, life-size but strangely small, on the floor against the wall. You feel you could pick it up and take it to hospital.
Here (1995) is a low bed-like form that you can lie down on and inhale oxygen from a cylinder that has been specially provided. The other two objects are a distorted black heart, Heart (1994), and an abstract white form, called Far (1995). Far is almost identifiable as a motorbike. At first, it looks like a futuristic Henry Moore, but lounging or leaning on the floor rather than actually standing on it. Its surface is a glinting opalescent white that seems to dissolve the weight of sculpture, turning it into a gas. A photo in the catalogue shows a young woman on a motorbike in an open space. The woman is Hapaska's grandmother and the place might be Ireland Hapaska is half Irish, half Parsee but it could be anywhere. It could be New Mexico and the woman could be Georgia O'Keeffe, another great traveller.
The shape of Heart, a wall relief, about eight inches deep and several feet high, was arrived at by elongating and bending a standard heart shape on a computer. The heart retains recognisability but becomes a mark on the wall, a flourish at the end of an invisible sentence. A speaker within the sculpture emits, at very low volume, the sound of water which we imagine to be waves and the lonely wail of a distant foghorn. The foghorn is the main sound you hear when you're lying down on Here.
With the exception of Heart, which is made of wood, the main material used throughout the exhibition is painted fibreglass. The dominant colours are black and white; the only others are the purple of Saint Christopher's tunic and the brown of its skin. The lighting is low and the walls of the space are a muted grey rather than the normal bright white.
The exhibition seems to have some kind of theme of Modernity. The objects are coldly realised; so sleek, so streamlined. They are relaxed and expansive in terms of their imagery and the references that they make to life experience, but, at the same time, they are extremely uptight in terms of their form. They seem amazingly labour-intensive in the context of today's art which, as we know, is generally more loose and open. Of course they are not exactly Minimalist since they are not exactly abstract, and they are not exactly pure. But they have the cold or perhaps cool authority of formalism. There's no mucking about with them.
The ostensible theme of the exhibition is actually not Modernity but modern travel. Travel can mean lots of things. It can mean escape, relief, excitement. It can mean hardship, loneliness, sadness. All of these are referred to, invoked, or illustrated in some way. No-one knows what saints really look like. Hapaska's has been realised as a mystical, unearthly, Indian fakir-like figure. However, the promise of wonderful spiritual travel is contradicted by the missing legs worn down, we are told, by many centuries of carrying travellers. This Saint Christopher is pathetic and helpless. Hearts are about love but this one is distorted and black, and gives out a sad sound. Here is luxurious and, in some ways, seductive. There is real sheepskin to lie down on, and water deliciously trickling all round the inner edges of the sculpture. Maybe transports of delight are on offer. But, as the title insists, you won't really be going anywhere. The gleaming surface of Here, its stark colouring, its funny, futuristic rounded shape, all suggest science fiction. There is always something a bit temporary and suspicious about happiness in science fiction. World disaster is either on the way, or has recently occurred. Likewise, the form of Far is sleek and speedy. But the gleaming surface the same surface that Here has is radioactive and mutant-like. Something bad has happened.
This is an impressive exhibition but somehow numbing at the same time. Each of the works proposes a poetic play of imagery and ideas, of textures and colours. All of these are interesting and serious, even when they seem playful. Like oxygen being proposed as a substitute for imagination. Or the conventional idea of sculpture as form emerging from shapeless mass, parodied in Far. But the impact of the exhibition seems to come less from any of these meanings than from the perhaps neurotic perfection of the works' realisation. As if extreme smoothness might be an expression of anxiety about the problem of expression itself if it is really possible, or necessary, to express anything at all.
