16 December 2010 – 20 February 2011
Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG
Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday 10am – 6pm; Wednesday 10am – 9pm
The works that comprise this exhibition are themselves interesting, but they are spectacularly dwarfed by the overarching concept that motivates their being gathered together in the first place. The exhibition offers works by Susan Hiller, Francis Bacon, Francis Upritchard, Francis Alÿs, Mike Nelson and Keith Coventry, a treasure trove if ever there was one.
Simon Starling has curated Never the Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) by searching through the entirety of Camden Arts Centre’s archives The thirty selected works have then been placed in the exact position in which they were placed first time around. The result is a living journey through recent art history, a Greatest Hits of Camden Arts Centre that oscillates between nostalgia and exaltation. But a journey of change in conflict with permanence, derived as the concept is from Heraclitus’ famous claim that you can never step in the same river twice.
If you have seen them before, it is good to see some of these works again, and if you have not seen them before, they are a delight the first time around. A real treat is Graham Gussin’s video of an idyllic loch, a scene that exemplifies the tranquillity of the British countryside. Every so often, however, the scene is interrupted by a missile shooting from the sky to the ground, breaking the silence so quickly that it can be missed in a blink. It is maddening because you miss the only event that occurs and end up standing there for a small eternity waiting for it to happen again, which is also the source of its intrigue.
Another delight is the appearance of an obscure but arresting Francis Bacon. Figure Study II expresses a deep anguish which almost bleeds into the bare walls around it. It sits opposite a work which explores its historical context of being painted the same year as the bombing of Hiroshima. Here the past and the present confront one another, colliding in an explosion of colour: Bacon’s legacy in contemporary art becomes all too clear.
The entire space of the gallery is utilised in a way that defies the ordinary logic of museums, since there are areas where works are crammed together like Steptoe’s yard and areas where they are sparsely placed with Minimalism in mind. Mike Nelson’s A Studio Apparatus for Camden Arts Centre dominates this spatial theme, consuming an entire room with its haphazard constellations of objects. It speaks not just of the history of art and the Centre itself, but also of the way that art has the capacity to consume and define space. The gallery is created, not by its walls, but by its contents, without which there would be no defined route through and no reason to explore adventurously.
Heraclitus claimed we could step in the same river twice because the relentless flow of the river means that it is in a state of flux, Starling claims that we cannot step in the same gallery twice, even if the same works are in the same places, because our own position in history constantly transports us beyond the moment of reception. The exhibition thus offers up the past in the present, forcing us to confront the passing of time and our fragile position in the present. The result is a deep sadness at a lost past and a tentative hope for a bright future, but with the bizarre caveat that even though the past is lost, art endures even longer than human life, so in making art we are leaving traces of our culture behind.
There is a luscious range of works here, which are a delight to see in themselves, and the collection has been tastefully selected to offer a sense of coherence. But, in the end, the works are insignificant in comparison to their guiding concept. Starling’s entire show is an artwork in itself: it is rumination on time and space, past and present, fragility and endurance, immanence and transcendence that, taken as a whole, offers a provocative reflection on the position of art and individuals in a universe of constant flux. So when you visit this show, enjoy its constituent parts as they were supposed to be enjoyed, but also look at the show as a unified whole in which the big idea supersedes the small ideas it is composed of.
Simon Starling: Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) is on at Camden Arts Centre until 20th February. For more information see the Camden Arts Centre website.
