Night at the Museum exhibition and reaction piece by Lewys Holt
Review by David Parkin
The Ryan Gander curated Night at the Museum, currently showing at Attenborough Arts Centre, is really, really good. It includes pieces from Arts Council and private collections. Ryan has a rich and varied taste so the work is of a very high standard yet strikingly different. It’s brilliant. You should go and see it. Bish, bash, bosh! What more do you need? Review done. I can go home now.
But … but … but … Night at the Museum has an added extra element which makes it really, really, really, really good. OK … so here’s the gimmick (that’s right, I’m calling it a gimmick – I didn’t go to arts school): some works of art (often sculptures) observe the other works of art (nearly always paintings). And that’s it. A beautiful, simple premise which works remarkably well.
A naked hairy chimp man looks blankly at an abstract minimal sheet of rising blue. Jacob Epstein’s Bust of Vaughan William’ raises a quizzical eyebrow at (what looked like to me and Lewys, later) a game of Battleships. An upright figure, who has a strange relationship with metre rulers, smiles knowingly at a ‘landscape’ that is just an arrangement of muted squares and rectangles.
This last relationship really worked for me. The strange metre sticks that the man held, which were also stuck to his back, and which he seemed completely comfortable with, explained his calm acceptance of the angled work in front of him. Landscape? That’s not a landscape for Christ's sake!
I’ve touched on merely a few, but there are a lot more here, and with each relationship there is a special touch – something unique – from the intimate to the outlandish. All in all, an outstanding exhibition.
Talking of the intimate and outlandish – let’s move on to Lewys Holt’s reaction piece. Lewys is a dancer and comedian, and both talents were at play here.
At first he was a strange, cheeky figure (in a weird, purple suit thing that looked very itchy) who emerged from behind plinths and flirted with the punters. Singling out an audience member, he would make eye contact and then slink around the space, coyly odd and beguiling.
This was a good start. It made a connection and for a while he was the art and our relationship to him came under question. It was perfect for an exhibition which looks at the viewer’s relationship with art, how separate pieces of work can have an interchange and, finally, where this leaves the viewer.
Throughout his movement piece Lewys took on all of these ideas. Sometimes he would place himself between the two pieces of art and his movement would reflect the mood created. At other times his smiling nomad would question how we were looking at the exhibition, and, highlighting his impressive dancing skill, he would spiral off from a work’s energy and create a stand-alone moment of abstract dance.
This section was lovely; playful and intelligently thought through, with just the right mix of precision and improvisation. Actually … looking back at what I have just written makes the piece sound quite cerebral (hey, maybe I can be an art critic after all), but it wasn’t. Lewys' performance was effortless fun which interacted with the exhibition perfectly, and the audience were just swept along. It was a joy to watch.
This section, for me, could have (and maybe should have) been a stand-alone piece, because then Lewys started talking and a little bit of the magic vanished. The odd, cheeky, silent weirdo was no more, and I grieved his passing. And I do feel a little mean for saying that; Lewys is obviously a very talented man and he was trying out ideas for a one-off performance. I guess it just shows that I felt the dance part of his piece was very, very good. What followed was also good, but I might not give it a 'very'.
Attached to various plinths were envelopes, with two names on each envelope. It turns out that they were the names of the pieces of art (not the real names, things like Reg and Rich). Lewys read from them and gave us tiny prose glimpses into their surreal world. A giant Twiglet (that's what it looked like to me!) complained of being too hot, an all-white hipster went on a cheese tour, and two pieces of art were trapped in a dream. The text was deliberately off-the-wall and achieved varied success. Sometimes Lewys really captured something about the art, and other times just missed.
But I don’t want to be sounding negative (bit of a downer, innit?) – I would have been quite happy with the later spoken work as an individual piece (it was peculiar and satisfying), but as I said earlier, it just jarred for me coming straight after the superior dance work.
So, let’s turn those frowns upside down and finish on a definite 'up'! The exhibition is really, really good. Lewys is really, really talented and a man to watch. His reaction piece, as a whole, was really good, but the dance part was really, really, really good. That’s right, I’ve added a ‘really’. It was that good.
In the world of reviewers there is talk that ‘stars’ have lost their meaning, what with too many productions getting a full five stars all the time. So, I’ve decided to introduce the ‘really’. I wonder if it will catch on? You know, like really catch on? Image: David Wilson Clarke