C107 review
Cardiff: Afterlife at Chapter
Afterlife
deals with the liminal space between life and death and
pinpoints a grey area, free from fear, that allows the
viewer to examine life and its set of complex relations
to the thereafter.
Untitled
walking record by Lawrence Lane gives us a glimpse
of this space. Walking across Europe Lane has 'captured'
the sounds of the transient in the form of a weighty document
(a limited edition record). The sounds, as audible spectre,
are emphasised by the weight of the record as a nonnegotiable
object. The contrast between the weight of the record
as 'document' and the delicacy of these stolen sounds
becomes metaphoric within the context of the show, somehow
symbolic of the temporal, intangible nature of life beyond
its physical constraints. In contrast to this, Past
lies (Matt White) blurs the boundaries between life
and death, past life and real-life confessional. Under
regression White discovers that in a previous existence
he was a rapist and murderer. Past lies becomes
a screen onto which each viewer is invited to project
their own belief system. What is discernible in both works
is the notion that life, the intangible spark, is indefinable
and just out of grasp but somehow ever-present.
Spectate,
a film by Anthony Shapland, takes this idea and examines
it through the unconscious moments of the living, the
notion that we all experience death in the moments when
we cease to be conscious. One such instance is through
the process of looking when one is no longer conscious
of one's corporeal state. The idea of the gaze as a form
of projection is also suggested in Clara Ursitti's work
Tail, where, in a small, cramped installation room
stinking of deer musk, the viewer tracks urban deer. The
relationship to the animal is unclear; is it hunted by
the viewer or are we part of the herd? The visceral nature
of the installation invites this speculation and takes
us back to an animal time where life and death are an
unconscious cycle.
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Top
to bottom above:
Clara Ursitti: Tail, video still; Matt White:
Past lies, video still; Anthony Shapland:
Spectate; video still; all courtesy Chapter
Arts Centre
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After image
(Susan MacWilliam) explores a more social relation to
death through the Victorian idea that the retina acts
as a camera and the last image seen is recorded as a photo
on the eyeball. This approach to the body after death
is a window into both socially constructed ideas of death
and also how society views the corpse as a husk after
life has passed by.
As with the
film After life from which the exhibition takes
its name, an abstract space is identified between the
reality of the corpse and the speculation as to what happens
next. In between these two areas is an idea, an unreal
space, a concept - a place in which to think and respond
to life in the abject. The selected works in the exhibition
negotiate and question this space and, as a whole, the
exhibition acts as body which cracks the equation of life
then death and creates a window of opportunity to think
outside the linear and beyond one's own belief system.
Jennie
Savage is an artist and writer.
Various artists:
Afterlife, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff,
October / November 2003
