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between borders
catalogue
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between borders work by British artists born elsewhere: Anthony Key, Sergei Ivanov, Alana Jelinek, Anne Rook, Tomomi Iguchi, Ian Robertson Toyota
Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota City, Japan Honen-in,
Kyoto, Japan Between Borders is the work of British artists born elsewhere and working in 1999 at Cable Street Studios, London. Between Borders was conceieved by the artists abd by Saturo Kato of Toyota City Cultural Organisation as both an exhibition and an exchange between the London-based artists and their Japanese contemporaries. Work was produced specifically for exhibition in Toyota City and at Honen-in Buddhist Temple in Kyoto and artists traveled to Japan with the support of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Cable Street Gallery was an artist-run initiative housed in a studio complex of over 150 studios in London's East End. The gallery was established in 1996 by Anne Rook, Anthony Key, Alana Jelinek, Grace Lodge, Michael Cubey and Sharon Byrne. Significantly, many of the artists working at Cable Street, including many of the founders of Cable Street Gallery, are artists from overseas,living and working in London. When Saturo Kato invited artists from Cable Street to particiapte in Between Borders, it was experiences of migration and cultural negotitaion that selected artists were asked to explore in their work for this project. Between Borders is a cultural exchange that is concerned by its very nature with negotiating 'difference', locality and global migration. Importantly, it recognises the contribution of global cultural interdependence at the heart of national cultural identity. Juliette
Brown With many thanks to The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Mitsuhiko Tera of ToyotaCity Municipal Museum of Art, Saturo Kato, Toshiko Honda, Kazumasa Honda, Masaaki Kazita, Hoson ando, Yasuhiro Ishikawa, Yasuo itami, Chiharu Kaji, Shieyuki Mizuno and Shozo Yamauchi. Especial thanks to all the homestay families.
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born
elsewhere What momentarily fixed notion of 'British culture' do we choose to present to an overseas audience, as we embark on a project conceived as cultural exchange? The way that Between Borders defines and represents itself, to a wider world, is as an exhibition of work by contemporary British visual artists, based around a theme of diverse cultural contexts. Within this group of British artists, none are traditionally so in the sense of being born here. What unites the work of the six is a sense of the particular cultural specificity and cultural interdependence of the individual British artist. In terms of the exhibition as a whole, the effect of this is a re-definition of the terms of being British, a challenge to notions of the mainstream and notions of difference. The challenge is enacted on two distinct levels and in particular contexts. There is on one hand a challenge to normative notions of British-ness and of difference, in a broad cultural and political sense. On the other, because this is a project of artistic exhibition, there is a challenge to the ways in which notions of difference are enacted and enforced in the presentation of artwork. What is addressed is a structural disparity, the opposition of mainstream (what is deemed representative) and marginal (what is deemed specific) within a visual art, curatorial context, in which work by particular artists on particular themes, is differentiated and given separate status. Between Borders is a project that brings us closer to a 'de-mystification', to use Cornel West's term, of historically constructed notions of national, natural, cultural and artistic identities. In this case, there is a particular challenge to ideas of the authentic and fixed nature of dominant cultures in opposition to the complex, shifting and inherently challenging natur, of 'others'. Rather than simply challenge the authority of what is presented as mainstreamor representative, Between Borders represents diversity of cultural contexts as the normative condition of existence, 'othering' the entire field of artistic endeavour, creating a field of individuated cultural contexts. Inevitably, one consequence of the logic of Between Borders is a critique of its own sphere of reference, one in which the spatial metaphors that continue to structure the presentation of artwork are those of dominant/peripheral, mainstream/marginal. Alice Yang has described a relationship in which notions of difference are enacte, through the ghettoization of artwork, in which particular artists become "artifacts of difference". Particular artwork is presented in such a way as to re-assert the fixed position of the 'mainstream'. Within that tradition, there are abundant recent examples of presentations of work representing notions of 'cultural diversity' or multiculturalism, which have continued to enforce distinctions whilst loudly proclaiming their own radicalism. Richard Hylton has described "ethnically tagged", work that is considered specific, exotic, peculiarly contextualisation or translation, in contrast to work that is presumed representative, universal and central. It is inevitably in part the way in which galleries such as the Whitechapel choose to present an exhibition of the work of 'British-Asian' artists as inherently "risky" that reinforces the distinctions between mainstream work and work thatis 'othered'. However powerful individual pieces and bodies of work, the presentation of work in ways that reinforce marginality is reductive in its approach. In White (1999), Richard Dyer writes of the need to contextualise and locate the central ground. In his terms, the central ground is the unacknowledged white subject. The prescription can be applied to any subject position that is supported by an unacknowledged privilege of invisible centrality. The need exists to 'other' what is presumed representative, to acknowledge the diverse individual contexts of each subject position. Equally,
Cornel West speaks of a certain kind of cultural work that "dare(s)
to recast, redefine and revise the very notions of 'modernity', 'mainstream',
'margins', 'difference', 'otherness' ". In Between Borders,
this manifests itself in exploration of specific perspectives and contexts
- cultural, geographic, political and Individual work within Between Borders reflects the kind of negotiations, spatial and historic, that might allow that individuality to be recognised. Context assumes the form of history and memory, locality and landscape, the interdependence of cultures. Layers of identity are seen to operate at the most intimate levels, and tensions acknowledged between points of origin and points of re-invention. There's
a sense of this in Anne Rook's Supermarket Fresh, 4021 and 4020 (Golde
Delicious), Products Of More Than On Country. A number of computer
generated apples are individually displayed, within
fruit punnets that are themselves lit within by a glaring supermarket
light. The apples are wholly covered by the kind of sticker that accompanies
produce the supermarket shelf, specifying, in its own abstracted way,
a place of origin. In this case, the origin is disguised, the context
is global. There is a playful mourning of the apple's loss of individuality
and distinction, The work clearly references contemporary globalization of produce and taste. It perceives anxieties around technology and the pace of change as the place at which science and post-modernism meet, in millennial fears of a de-centred, fragmented, rapidly shifting world, where origins are no longer clear and knowable. Like Edwina Fitzpatrick's Cultivar (Slow Release at Rich Mix, Bishopsgate Goodsyard, November 1999 - March ~ 2000), Rook's work draws comparisons between the processes of cultivation and cultural naturalisation, examining ideas of natural and naturalised. Both pieces explore ways of representing a contemporary understanding of transculturality, the idea of diverse, yet organic cultural contexts that synthesize and form, from the sum of their parts, an individual and distinct entity. Rook's work highlights in particular a connection between economics and cultural transformation, focussing as it does on the notion of the product of globalisation or global interdependence. In Rook's Virtual Orchard, Global Cultivation, computer generated brochures display apple trees that consist entirely of product labels. Again, the reference to technology raises contemporary anxieties over bio-technology and loss of individual identity and flavour, but what the work is also doing is recreating a traditional market scene. Rook re-writes in contemporary terminology an historical connection between food and trade, re-asserting the significance of economics and trade as a catalyst for cultural transformation. Within a perceived opposition of globalized culture and national or individual specificity, the notion of 'products of more than one country' becomes important in the context of this collection of work. The notion implies a universe in which context is not reducible to one geographical or cultural place, which is impossible to locate within defined boundaries. It represents most effectively an experience of cultures within cultures, inextricably interdependent. The use of the apple returns us to the central ground - the apple being symbolic in a Northern European context in its perceived ordinariness (represented in Cultivar as typically English and in Rook's work as typically French). To question the , naturalness of the apple is to emphasize the process of naturalization or acculturation as it is played out, across the board. National, cultural and individual definitions, whilst relying strongly on a sense of themselves as innate are reconfigured as necessrily artificial, learned entities. Wherever the definitions are employed, the artificial process of naturalization is seen to operate. In Fast Food a fa Francaise, Rook raises the question of cultural inequalities, contrasting the French escargot with the corporate hegemony of Americanized global culture. Rook recognises cultural interdependence as mediated through various narratives of historic, racial and economic inequalities. Inevitably, these are histories that effect our ability to naturalize or reconcile our different cultural contexts. Anthony Key's Chopsticks/Spoon and Fork, rather than setting itself up as an opposition of distinct cultural traditions, specifically those understood as east and west, suggests a combination of influences. The ends of a pair of chopsticks have been carefully re-carved into spoon and fork, suggesting an ongoing negotiation between apparently distinct methods and styles. Key's work reminds us again of a broader historical context, in which despite the apparent dominance of any particular culture at any given time, individual cultures continue an inevitable interaction with one another on any number of levels, many of which subvert the notion of a dominant cultural agenda. The significance of this work is that it represents an ability to fuse elements of what are perceived as oppositional cultures in a way that is entirely functional and coherent. The dynamic that operates in Key's work is fundamentally active and purposeful. It is concerned with negotiating the fusion of contexts actively, as an expression of everyday experience. Key's
Three Lions on a Shirt is an England football shirt, on which
the English lions have been replaced with Chinese lion-dogs. The work
can be read as a direct challenge to definitions of Englishness. It places
'difference' at the heart of one of the most powerful symbols of English
nationalism, literally placing the experience of transculturaliry within
the fabric of the English experience. In its traditional sense, no single
item conveys the distinction between groups and nations more emphatically
than the football shirt. Key's shirt subverts the logic of the football
shirt at the same time as retaining its singular exuberance. It conveys
a certain confidence in the ability of the wearer to re-configure Similarly concerned with distinction and difference, Alana Jelinek's Ayers Rock (Uluru), enacts, to visceral and intellectual effect, a number of tensions between spatial and spiritual ideological territory. Materially, the work is a large carpet of canvas which, as it lies on the gallery floor, intrudes into the space of the audience, forcing a negotiation with the sacrosanct space of the artwork. It issues a challenge, daring the viewer to cross its borders. As a carpet, it hogs the precious gallery space, refusing to co-operate. It is markedly not interactive. The effect of the impediment is substantial. The representation is a view from above of a group of travellers, or, more specifically, tourists, following a mountain pathway from one side of the canvas to the other; the landscape recognisable as Ayers Rock, Australia's greatest symbolic national/natural monument, tourist attraction and sacred Aboriginal site. On one dimension, a distinction is drawn between definitions of the sacred. The centrality of Western liberal discourses dictates that while we desecrate the temple, we preserve its inviolate representation on canvas. The point is forced to its limit in the material dimensions of the piece, a carpet that polices its boundaries, subverting our sense of entitlement, our right to roam. Working at levels of emotion and conscious moral mediation, it eases us from our customary central ground. Focusing on the motif of the tourist, Jelinek returns the question to one of global dynamics of power, questions of entitlement and ways in which distinctions are reinforced - particularly rhrough perceptions of our own centrality and the marginality of others. The figure of the tourist in Jelinek's work operates as a defining symbol of dominant liberal philosophy. Through this motif, Jelinek frames a compelling critique of the arrogance, hypocrisy and sense of blind entitlement that she finds within the Western liberal tradition. She points to the exoticization of native cultures and the unchallenged doctrines of racial and cultural definition thar pervade both tourism and liberalism. Above all, her critique is directed at the fiction of the level playing field that lies at the heart of liberal principles. Siting
the work at Ayers Rock, Jelinek refers the audience to the continued violent
negotiation of colonial territories. Relationships that are constructed
to appear reciprocal remain structured by As liberals / tourists, we seek difference at the moment of denying its existence, choosing to construct scenarios in which our sense of our own national and cultural definition is validated, in opposition to that of those we perceive as different. Importantly, focusing the work on the motif of the tourist allows the central ground to be occupied by any of us whose experience includes a visit to a 'foreign' context. Jelinek calls into question precisely the prevalent liberal anxiety around negotiations with 'others'. An anxiety that extends to negoitations with 'elewhere', the foreign context. There are references in much of Jelinek's work to the shaping of landscape into a context in which we can safely define our desires. The resort is demonstrated to be a location designed to reinforce notions of fixed and stable cultural contexts, a place where difference is the defining economic force. It is itself a place between borders, where the diversity of contexts that operate in favour of rigidly defined and thematicized versions of national and cultural stereotypes. Between Borders comes to represent an imaginary location of liberal desire, in which fictions of postcolonial multicultural equality exist alongside ideas of the tourist as a regenerative force. The values that are consistent with particular localities are replaced by those contigent on a suffocating liberal fantasy. Ayers Rock (Uluru) and other recent work by this artist operates as a demystification of the processes of dominant and largely unacknowledged liberal structures of thought. It raises, to my mind, direct questions of its audience, in terms of definitions of difference, in terms of operations of power and systems of thought in relation to people and to land. The questions concern to what degree we are prepared to deny the diverse contexts we pass though in our desire to reinforce a fictive sense of our own cultural centrality and definition. Sergei
Ivanov's Untitled work is a series of battered, washed and folded
papers, scarred by rows of indentations and methodic Distance on the work reveals the shapes of fields, fencing, rows of trees as seen from above - like the landscape in Jelinek's work,it appears as nature re-ordered by human hand. The land is viewed from a distanced, birds eye perspective, revealing roads and clearings, human needs imposed on the 'natural' space. Ivanov, abstractly, reveals society's incremental advance on the land, the beginning of human shapes. His focus is on the texture of these developments, on the architectural shapes, on the boundary markers that separate distinct territories, on the influence of historic migrations, many of which are pre-colonial, They re-connect with a story of global trade, transit, cultural interdependency that pre-dates the modern age, offering, again, a broader historical perspective on global interconnectivity. Ivanov's landscapes reflect a perspective on the idea of the 'natural' and the 'constructed" that runs through much of the work in this collection. Importantly, distinctions between natural and architectural are blurred and abstracted. The human and the natural are seen as distinctions subject to re-evaluation, definitions that exist within and of one another. The structures that support these definitions are not equal to these different perspectives, these new ways of seeing. Diary, an installation piece by Tomomi Iguchi, operates on a more intimate level, concerned essentially with conveying a sense of individual context. The work is a shrine of objects suggesting history and memento mori - lengths of kimono silk,music hall scrolls, 2 backbone vertebrae, feathers, charcoal, unspun wool and dried, flowers. Photographic emulsion plates reveal images of people in old-fashioned clothing, perhaps relatives, posing formally for an unseen photographer. A video projected onto the kimono silk lingers obsessively on the forms of flowers and church candles, cuts to a train journey through an unspecified landscape, followed by a cityscape seen from a hotel room. Diary reflects the necessity of ritual and memory to the dis-placed, contrasting history and intimate memory with impermanence and anonymity, as a consequence of exile or migration, whether chosen or forced. Diary conveys a sense of individual histories as intangibly fluid, a sense of something unknowable beyond its original context, despite attempts to contain its essence in memento form. The artist retains the right to represent herself as unknowable, denying access to specific experience and at the same time reinforcing her individuality as a powerful subject position. Place, Space, Event, an installation by Ian Robertson, also uses individual intimate objects, in ways that are more concerned with communicating a connection and a context. Robertson has literally created an exchange of location, with a choice of objects from his London studio, interior and exterior, succeeding in conveying a sense of specific place and time, scattered across a single wall-space. His choice highlights both the globally familiar and the distinctly local. Polaroids emphasise the idea of an ordinary moment in recorded time, represented by a range of fundamental elements: trees, houses, a plane overhead, coupled with a sponge, some photos and small, abstract canvases signifying perhaps the interior space of the artist. There's recognition, in some of the choices, of cultural specificity based around specific faiths and traditions: an image of Christ, a classical grid, Western mathematical measurements. Beyond
what appears a random selection is a sense of the process of making art
grounded in particular cultural contexts. The work can be read as a conscious
indication of the importance placed on certain cultural traditions within
Western art historical contexts. Robertson's work articulates an acknowledgement
of the Importance of cultural location. He returns what This collection of work as a whole serves to open up the possibility of a territory defined in terms that we are, as yet, unfamiliar with, outside of the ways in which we are accustomed to thinking. Thinking about the notion of 'between borders', it's clear that there is literally no such recognised space, between nation states or states of being. This collection of work exists to explore an entity that has no formal recognition, rejecting a particular system of definition that relies on notions of oppositional cultures and hierarchies of difference. There
is an important recognition of the constructed nature of national and
cultural narratives, a critique of concepts of the
Juliette Brown |
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