What if you took all the images that have collected on your computer and created a room that was filled with them? The result may look something like Camille Henrot’s The Pale Fox, showing at East London’s Chisenhale gallery. Stepping into a pool of images, sculptures and iPads floated together by the same cobalt blue, I was taken by this buoyant mystery. How do we look at all this ‘stuff?’ The sounds that echoed through the room were mostly reverberating gongs with the occasional recorded cough. I thought at first that cough was someone in the room. I felt as if something was going to happen.
The title, The Pale Fox, is taken from the creation story of the West African Dogon people. It is an ‘installation version’ of the film Grosse Fatigue presented at the 55th Venice Biennale, where Henrot was awarded the Silver Lion for most promising young artist. The film was developed during a residency Henrot undertook at the largest museum in the world, The Smithsonian in Washington DC. Henrot describes herself as having a ‘cataloguing psychosis.’ Trying to comprehend all the information that the museum held as forming a single, objective narrative would have been impossible. Dogon mythology is thought to incorporate the belief systems of several different cultures; desribed as a ‘meta-narrative.’ Henrot has taken this concept and used it as a tool for constructing and observing a body of information.
<div id="attachment_27491" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/uploads/2014/03/IMG_4628.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27491" class=" wp-image-27491 " title="Camille Henrot's The Pale Fox" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_4628-260x173.jpg" alt="IMG_4628" width="600" height="450" /></a>Camille Henrot’s The Pale Fox </div>
Other knowledge and anthropological studies are used as another body to sift our own collections of information. Is this the moment when something changes from information to knowledge? During an interview on Resonance FM, Paul O’Kane describes the revisiting of information being the moment when ‘..every time you take your book down from the shelf, it seems like the words in your book have had a party and moved around and found a new form.’ Each time we look at something, the world has changed, so what we are looking at has changed too. In using creation myths as a mediation to give shape to the contents of her digital collection; her collection of fascinations, we now see that ‘the calabash and the DropBox are the same object, they are both containers.’
 
<div id="attachment_27485" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_4689.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27485" class=" wp-image-27485 " src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_4689-260x173.jpg" alt="Camille Henrot's The Pale Fox" width="600" height="450" /></a>Camille Henrot’s The Pale Fox</div>
There is a toy snake which slithered across the carpet between viewers. I was wondering how it was being moved before noticing the invigilator operating a remote control. Snakes across cultural mythology are the onset of knowledge, like Henrot’s unexpected cough echoed in the room, they are the spark, the ‘bang!’ factor which sneezes everything into a new order.  I wanted to have a go with the remote control snake.  There was a toddler looking quite afraid of it but I wanted to show him otherwise. I’m not sure he was convinced as I lent my hand in the creation of Henrot’s exhibition.
For further information see Chisenhale Gallery’s website <a href="https://www.chisenhale.org.uk/exhibitions/current_exhibition.php">HERE</a>.

Exhibition Review: ‘The Pale Fox’ Chisenhale Gallery

Douna Lim is studying a BA in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins and plans to continue her studies with a masters, maybe somewhere else, we’ll see.
I had a chat with Douna the other week at her studio in university.
JW:  Are these sculptures or images? (There is a little pill placed between the pages of an open book. The shape of the pill corresponds to the shapes on both patterned pages.) There’s lot of references to nature too; trees, bits of mountains.
DL:  Nature is an obvious starting point. It’s there to begin with, something to look at.
 
<a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/uploads/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.19.47-PM.jpg"><img class="wp-image-27342 aligncenter" title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial view" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.19.47-PM-300x300.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2014-01-29 at 12.19.47 PM" width="600" height="450" /></a>
<dl id="attachment_27342" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 510px;">
<dd class="wp-caption-dd">Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial view</dd>
</dl>
 
JW: So you’re more concerned with how to look at something?  Or is the starting point of nature also important?
DL: I’ve been looking at having the camera really close to something but having your body really far away from it.
JW: 
Nature as a subject matter suggests that what you’re interested in is changeable and interconnected. Like the weather in one part of the world, there is an immeasurable effect with the corresponding weather in a completely opposite corner of the earth. 
So you’re talking about seeing two opposite perspectives of the same thing at once?
DL: There are different images, the image you see and an image which is inside of you that corresponds to the image seen.
JW: Someone else could be looking at the same image as you but seeing a different internal image.
DL:  It’s that gap
JW: It’s a performance.
DL: Yes, I started writing a script between a sleepwalker and an insomniac. I was thinking about the miscommunication in dialogue that could happen. I think I write in a very visual way. The narrative is driven visually.
JW: So they’re both communicating with each other about the same experience but they’re experiencing it differently. It’s the mediation.
DL: Mediation is a really interesting term; there’s a matter of media as in a mathematical sense, being a middle point. A meeting point of two distinct trajectories maybe.
JW: An investigation; with you as the investigator. You put images of the same things into different mediums. What we see is a sculpture, a digital rendition created through software and a screen-print of the same image, altogether.
DL: That’s right, it’s in a way using a ‘Google Glass,’ constantly unfolding information from one image, one sight. A supernatural ability to be omniscient and singular at the same time.
JW: You’re making space.
DL:  If the space we’re talking about here is definitely about proximity than distance, yes.
 
<div id="attachment_27232" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_9631_2-1.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27232" class=" wp-image-27232 " title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_9631_2-1-260x173.jpg" alt="IMG_9631_2-1" width="600" height="450" /></a>Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place</div>
 
<div id="attachment_27340" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.16.17-PM.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27340" class=" wp-image-27340 " title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial View" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.16.17-PM-300x300.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2014-01-29 at 12.16.17 PM" width="600" height="450" /></a>Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial View</div>
 JW: I forgot to ask simply: ‘What it is you’re looking at?’
DL: That’s ironically the hardest question for me. I’d rather say I see nothing, but plenty to look at! 
I went to a talk about Wim Wenders’ and philosopher’s Mary Zournazi’s new book (Inventing Peace, a Dialogue on Perception) Wim Winder’s said that ‘looking is different to seeing.’ He spoke about the relationship between the camera, audience and actors in the work of Japanese director Ozu. Winders’ described Ozu’s films as ‘cinema that is tender and compassionate.’
JW: It’s funny that you say that.  (We both sort of mock-swoon) That’s giving feelings, human emotions, to mechanistic processes.
<div id="attachment_27234" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/DounaLim2_-copy.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27234" class=" wp-image-27234 " title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/DounaLim2_-copy-260x173.jpg" alt="DounaLim2_ copy" width="600" height="450" /></a>Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place </div>
 
<div id="attachment_27343" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.16.11-PM.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27343" class=" wp-image-27343 " title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial View" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/Screen-shot-2014-01-29-at-12.16.11-PM-300x300.jpg" alt="Screen shot 2014-01-29 at 12.16.11 PM" width="600" height="450" /></a>Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place, Aerial View</div>
 
JW: I can’t help thinking about alchemy.
DL: The intellectual concept of alchemy is the search for a ‘pure material.’
JW: Perhaps synthetic.
DL: I want to talk about a process that relates to alchemy, without any of the mysticism attached to it.
JW: The image of mysticism is already attached to it.  An alchemist is an investigator though, of materials. Perhaps it’s your desire to approach your work with the qualities of an investigator or maybe, to use your art as a tool for investigation.
DL: For me, alchemy it is a way of describing a creative process:
1 element internal to me   + 1 element external to me  = something else.
JW:  We can’t avoid talking about Carl Jung.
DL: For Jung, there are three derisions on what alchemy reaches:
<ol>
<li>Pure material</li>
<li>Primary material</li>
</ol>
And more figuratively,
<ol>
<li>Gold!</li>
</ol>
I’m most interested in the idea of a primary material.
JW: A material yet to be transformed. It’s still in conversation.
We forgot to talk about otherness, or maybe we did when we were talking about Wim Wenders. We just didn’t use the buzz word.
 
<div id="attachment_27233" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_9604_2.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27233" class=" wp-image-27233 " title="Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/03/IMG_9604_2-260x173.jpg" alt="IMG_9604_2" width="600" height="450" /></a>Douna Lim, 3 Perspectives, 1 Place</div>
You can find images Douna Lim is interested in on her Tumblr site <a href="https://l0st4ndf0und.tumblr.com/">HERE</a>.

Artist Profile: Douna Lim

I’m looking at two deer, their heads turned from me. Two black and white photographs of the same deer?  Together they murmur incongruence. The mysterious dainty heads against the patterned formations of the paving stones. Joseph Lempart’s photographs examine the friction between human and animal activity, how they transform each other’s environments. The question asked is what are the conditions of our environment? What is inescapably present? Both mirroring and change are what I see here. Another duo of narratives linked together are the two screens of Helen Cammock’s The Singing Will Never Be Done, which echo different racial voices through the prism of the family.  We hear a part of Enoch Powell’s late 1960s Rivers of Blood speech which reflected the terror of many native British people at the sudden influx in immigration.  Paralleled in the natural world, we are shown the miraculous and unsolved appearance of green parakeets in West London. They serve here as a reminder of the unstoppable tide of changing demography. There is a plea for adaptability- life goes on whilst we look at the artists’ mother tending to her garden.
The title of the exhibition, You Don’t Need a Weather Man to Tell Which Way the Wind Blows Is taken form the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues, written at the time of the American Civil Rights Movement. These lyrics are a calling for the younger generation to make up their own minds about the political changes around them. The exhibition not only references this viewpoint, but shows works by artists who deploy animals to speak of moments of change.  Perhaps the instinctual ability to simply just look and see for ourselves, is more akin to our natural animal relations than the social environments we have constructed.
Knut Henrik‘s Elephant sculpture is made up of precisely cut planks of wood. Using the wall as support, the timber pieces are structured into a gradual slope that forms a half cylindrical head, with the last piece, the trunk, resting on the floor. My eye wanders around it and it teases for me to dig here, behind it, to see how it may be imbued into the rest of the building. The bronze sculptures of Andrea Büttner’s, Table Decorations, are cast zebra droppings from her local zoo in Frankfurt, suggesting value and change. They speak of the unstoppable processes  within the Earth which turn all living life into mineral and living life again. Everything is used.
<div id="attachment_26713" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/uploads/2014/02/IMG_4361.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26713" class="size-medium wp-image-26713 " title="Andrea Büttner's 'Table Decorations'" alt="IMG_4361" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4361-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Andrea Büttner’s ‘Table Decorations’</div>
The importance of environment in shaping ourselves is also carried within Bruno Pacheco’s Whale, a small painting of the beached animal taken from a found photograph of the larger work displayed at the Serralves Museum in Portugal. The moment of the whale’s beaching is the moment of it’s transformation from weightlessness in water to deathly disability on shore. The Artist and philosopher Pierre Huyghe, also in the exhibition, with A Way to Untilled, once spoke of his work as a suspending of time, ‘suspend[ing] the moment of the opening forever. It’s an endless opening.’ If what we are looking at in some of these works is the moment of change, suspended for us to see, then we see the very timelessness of this change.
 
<div id="attachment_26714" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4372.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26714" class="size-medium wp-image-26714 " title=" Bruno Pacheco’s 'Whale' and Knut Henrik's 'Elephant' " alt="IMG_4372" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4372-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Bruno Pacheco’s ‘Whale’ and Knut Henrik’s ‘Elephant’</div>
 
Huyghe’s video of his created landscape at Documenta shows us a place outside of culture yet deeply informed by it. A representation of timelessness, we see the layered activity of insects, a dead mouse and aphrodisiacal plants amongst a dumping ground for building materials. Whilst bees scuttle across the secret folds of a beehive-headed statue, the Tarkovskyian appearance of a gaunt white dog with one painted pink leg acts as an inexplicable navigator in the Way of Untilled. The dog is a massive reference to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, to cinema itself. But culture is not a dead-end quoting machine. It creates through re-using itself, just as much as the bugs in this place. We are deeply embedded into our environments, culturally or otherwise, like the whale in Pacheco’s painting.
<div id="attachment_26715" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4343.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26715" class="size-medium wp-image-26715 " title="Pierre Huyghe's film, 'Way of Untilled'" alt="IMG_4343" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4343-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Pierre Huyghe’s film, ‘Way of Untilled’</div>
 
This twilight zone, between creation and collapse, is formed too in the exasperated mini landscapes of Aaron Angell’s sculptures. Looking at them I want to laugh. The use of clay in making these objects makes me think of hobbyists, kitsch decorations in second-hand shops and car-boot sales that nobody really wants. There is a narrative in these little tableaux’s of drooping wheels and toadstools. Angell has suggested that they are a ‘maquette for bad ideas,’ How do we judge these? Are they unfinished or in bad taste?
<div id="attachment_26716" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4389.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26716" class="size-medium wp-image-26716 " title="Aaron Angell's sculptures" alt="IMG_4389" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4389-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Aaron Angell’s sculptures</div>
 
Our need to interact with our environment, to categorize its worth to us is explored through the behavior of flocking pelicans, a parallel of housewives who are Charming for the Revolution in Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s film. Using the pelican as a symbol for an ineffective crowd-pleasing milleu, we are shown enactment, drag, and a dandy of the 19th Century described by Walter Benjamin as walking a tortoise on a leash in protest against the workings of industrialization. Animals in the works of these artists are used to confront a reality, to recalibrate oneself or to describe a state of mind.
<div id="attachment_26717" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4427.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26717" class="size-medium wp-image-26717 " title="Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s film, 'Charming for the Revolution'" alt="IMG_4427" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4427-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s film, ‘Charming for the Revolution’</div>
The exhibition is about many things; looking at animals we could go almost anywhere. It is through confrontation with change and our grasping of understanding that is the consistent subject reflected in the title of A Way to Untilled. 
It is in The Singing [that] Will Never Be Done.
Check out the exhibition at Hollybush Gallery, 17th January- 22nd February.
For more info click <a href="https://hollybushgardens.co.uk/">HERE</a>.
<div id="attachment_26718" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4377.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-26718" class="size-medium wp-image-26718 " title="Joseph Lempart and Aaron Angell" alt="IMG_4377" src="https://api.crackintheroad.com/images/2014/02/IMG_4377-260x173.jpg" width="260" height="173" /></a>Joseph Lempart and Aaron Angell</div>

Crack in the Road

Exhibition Review: ‘The Pale Fox’ Chisenhale Gallery

Artist Profile: Douna Lim

Exhibition Review: You Don’t Need a Weather Man to Tell You Which Way the Wind Blows