Exhibition review: 180 the strand

When I visited 180 The strand for the “strange days: memories of the future” exhibition, I didn’t initially know what to expect. The sentence “Memories of the future” highly intriugs me as a memory is something we can recollect from a past experience, where as if we place this in the context of the future; it is almost like we predicting what a future could be in possibly certain contexts. The fact it was all moving image based, When using film or video- it is easy to warp and document a particular ideology or point of view as the audience will often forget that it may not be reality and take it for fact, causing a personal relation. If a particular artist had a certain point of view of the future it is easy to show this concept in positive light or be biased towards their agenda.

Due to alot of the work being on social commentary, It opened up a forum of discussion with not only my peers but also from what I saw online.

One of the most talked about installations I viewed was ‘Jungle of desire’ by Wong Ping. The primary coloured geometric animation tells a story about a husband who hides in his wardrobe watching as him wife becomes a prositute to boost her own sexual pleasure which she feels she isn’t receiving from him, As the animation continues you begin to notice that the husband forms a Herd of jealousy towards the men after an undercover police man begins to take advantage of his wife, Feeling this- the husband talks about wanting to harm the officer through a deep depression and eventually killing him with his own farts. Although the animation is very humorous, its a form of dark comedy in the way the reality of it would be highly upsetting for an individual but the way in which it is described is childishly comical.

In terms of the exhibition theme, You could say the husbands memory of the future would be killing the villain using his own farts for blackmailing his lover- in simpler terms; Brightening his future by fantasying of getting rid of evil. In a serious soicoiolgical context, Sex work is a hugely taboo subject and when a woman especially choses to go into the sex industry, a lot of the times she receives unwanted commentary on her sociolgical value. To add to this point- Although the female may opt for this career, they may often be taken advantage of.As sex workers have such a low rank in society, many customers will abuse this by either not paying, becoming violent, treating them with little or no respect or acting out disturbing fetishs’ or criminal acts due to purely a social ranking. This animation for me was a commentary on this issue which was executed in an amusing way so that the audience could engage in something they believe is a comedy when in reality the more you think about its connotations, you see its really a social comment. 

I personally found each exhibition work fitting in their own way, whether it was obvious, subtle, connotive or simple social and historical commentary. Although as said that some pieces were not explicitly commentary on the concept of future, I believe that many where simple a capture of our current world and how beautiful or destructive it may be. An example of this for me was ‘4th floor to mildness’ by Pipilotti Rist. In this piece of interactive work the audience must lie on a bed in order to view the projected videos of sea life and ceans onto cloud shaped surfaces above. This was very intimately feeling to me and was conotive of dreaming what a future could be like, this resonated with me due to the extinction of the great barrier reef and the way the earth environment is declining. It simply showed how beautiful our world is and could maintain to be. 

From just entering the venue I was very overwhelmed due to the style of curation and size of the exhibition as it resembled very much a labyrinth but after a while you begin to find the flow of each of the rooms. Unless you have 3-4 hours to spare as ‘The londonist’ suggested, like me you would feel very overwhelmed by the lengthy pieces and large amount of gallery space. This was further emphasised by the large concept of what the exhibition was curated around- Lots of the works as mentioned previously were very self interprative which many could find this confusing.

To conclude, I thoroughly enjoy this exhibition. It was eye opening, very thoughtful in its curation and execution, engaging and was appealing for artists who all have different visual aesthetics they may be attracted to (e.g animation, film, documentary). I wish to visit the space again to not only re-process the works but also for future exhibitions as the curation was overwhelmingly brilliant throughout its structure and how it forced you to visit every ideology to understand each persons interpretation.