C104 review
Venice:
Fergus Martin and Anthony Hobbs at Oratorio S. Ludovico
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Fergus
Martin and Anthony Hobbs: My paradise is here,
2003
installation shot, Oratorio S. Ludovico, Venice;
courtesy the artists
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We always
project our own desires and tastes on art, convinced that
we are being open- minded and that our judgment and perception
are the result of honest, unprejudiced experience. The
same applies to the creators of art, who are convinced
that their precision and their absolute emotional distance
from their work will get them an unambiguous result.
Yet experienced
artists know that no matter how hard they try, they will
have no control over the interpretation of their work,
and that the best they can do is to let things happen
by following their intuition and by allowing themselves
to be perfectly innocent in their approach.
Now, at the
Oratorio S. Ludovico in Venice, and following last year's
Alistair Wilson exhibition, we can delight once again
in such an attitude, which in the end provides us with
more than a simple exhibition - it becomes virtually a
spiritual experience.
Fergus Martin
and Anthony Hobbs present a series of high-resolution
photographs, a sequence of gestures inspired by the theatricality
of Venetian classical and renaissance church paintings.
Using the space with ability and respect, they let their
performative drama merge with the architecture until it
takes on the same solemn aura as we find in religious
paintings.
For me the
sequence begins within the second room of the church,
from the image depicting the exposed centre of the human
body, the navel, which is perceived in many different
cultures as our 'self'. The artists juxtapose this photo
with smaller ones of adult men in foetus position - the
beginning of 'self' - and they finish the sequence with
photographs three meters high of men acting out the folly
of human drama: with gestures of desperation, meditation
and abandonment. The work becomes a portrait of the emotional
drama which accompanies our lives from day one until the
end of it.
Sonia
Rolak is an artist, art critic and curator based in
Venice.
Fergus Martin
and Anthony Hobbs: My paradise is here,
Oratorio S. Ludovico, Venice, April 2003
