Jenny Holzer, 'Artist Room' At mac Birmingham

Jenny Holzer, 'Blue Purple Tilt', Illuminated LED Signs X 7, 2007

I met my friend and fellow artist, Andrew Smith again, in Birmingham, the other day.  It was an enjoyable day of chewing the fat, (and falafels), which also involved taking in a couple of rewarding exhibitions.  Amongst those was American conceptual artist, Jenny Holzer’s ‘Artist Room’ at mac Birmingham.  Although minimal (if elgant) in physical content, the exhibit contains a wealth of artistic/intellectual content.  My hunch is it would actually repay repeat visits, which isn’t bad for what might, at first glance, appear to be merely two ‘pieces’ in a single room.

  

Those two pieces comprise of illuminated LED arrays, along which texts continually chase.  They’re the kind of thing one might encounter in a transport hub, stock exchange or public space (such as New York’s Times Square, for instance), and reflect Holzer’s habitual attempts to present potentially challenging Art content via more traditionally utilitarian or commercial delivery systems.  At one end of the gallery, six such parallel display units are arranged, vertically in the frontal plane - but also angled back to the wall (entitled, 'Blue Purple Tilt').  The same textual content scrolls along each of these six bands, whilst fluctuating coloured light illuminates the wall behind and immediate surroundings.  The second piece ('Floor') forms a single, longer array, extending horizontally along the floor - and appearing to emerge from (or disappear into) one wall.  In both cases, text is orientated vertically in terms of each physical light box – meaning that, in this piece, one must tilt one’s head to the side, or view the piece end-on, to easily read the scrolling text.

However, as already intimated, the real meat of the show is in the textual content – itself a wide selection of Holzer’s earlier text works, be they polemical or of a more personal/emotional/autobiographical nature.  The radical and consciously feminist underpinnings of many of Holzer’s ‘messages’ are no secret.  However, this show’s essential function as compilation just emphasises how this material can fluctuate between the direct, or even sloganeering, and the more obliquely allusive.  The negotiation of this particular tightrope is something I’ve been considering in relation to my own ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ work, of late.  It also illuminates (literally) the potential interrelationship between personal and ideological politics.

Would it be too simplistic or stereotypical to attribute this ability to bring a distinct emotional intelligence to bear upon conscious political analysis to a number of leading contemporary female artists, I wonder?  In reality, one might hope that such binary distinctions between the emotional/theoretical, or between female/female habits of thought in general, might be rendered increasingly obsolete, as gender-based identities themselves become seemingly ever more fluid.  Whatever the truth of this, Holzer herself shows no inclination to pull her punches, with emotionally raw, sexually graphic, or polemically strident elements all taking their place alongside more poetic or ambiguous material.  Andrew and I both relished the way she will sometimes present a series of unrelated, superficially simplistic truisms in a direct, seemingly relativistic manner – leaving the reader to unpack the layers of meaning or potential connections which may or may not be there.

Jenny Holzer, (L.) 'Blue Purple Tilt', (R.) 'Floor' Illuminated LED Signs, mac Birmingham,
August 2017

In fact, to say the main point of Holzer’s work is in the content isn’t strictly true, and actually, that understanding of the ‘work’ required on the part of the viewer is key here.  As with all the best Conceptual art (I sometimes consider ‘philosophical’ a preferable label), the real rewards are to be found in considering the relationship between what may be said (or suggested), and the manner in which it is being said.  It all goes back to all that old McLuanesque stuff about medium and message, I suppose, but in an ever more mediated culture, and one in which supposed  ‘truths’ and ‘facts’ are no longer regarded as imalleable.  Context and our ability or inability to absorb and evaluate it are more relevant than ever when considering our relationship with any stream of information.  Holzer’s work is, above all, concerned with the nature of delivery systems, and how they colour (again, literally), our apprehension of the material they carry.

Jenny Holzer, 'Floor', Illuminated LED Sign, 2017

It seems to me that the brilliant (and again) trick she pulls with these chasing text pieces is to make them quite, but not completely difficult, to read.  Our familiarity with such kinetic, matrix-based displays is that they require a certain amount of work to decipher.  In common usage, the trade-off is between the expenditure of this effort, and the often bald or simplistic nature of the information delivered.  Such scrolling or flashing messages are, by their very nature, fleeting, but then, so often are the meanings they impart.  They imply a temporary  relationship with information, as well as a temporal one.

 

Holzer uses all near-subliminal tricks of the medium to upset this customary interaction.  These include an almost-too-fast-to read pacing and distinctly torrential relentlessness of the texts, the gimmicky programming of colliding, overlapping or flickering phrases, their integration within potentially conflicting, colour-shifting background patterns, and even the simple expedient of awkwardly rotating characters by 90 degrees.  It all serves to make us work harder than we might choose to extract meaning or to arrive at a possible interpretation.  The retention and satisfactory digestion of Holzer’s words are rendered near impossible.  We are forced to confront, in a seemingly inappropriate manner, the kind of profound or emotionally resonant material traditionally reflected upon over repeat visits to the printed page.  It feels like an accelerated form of philosophy - but equally, as a philosophical interrogation of the nature of acceleration.

One consequence of all this might be that the disengaged viewer might spend only a few seconds with the show, before losing heart, searching for coffee, or returning to a different illuminated display of their own.  Another is to abandon the impossible task of keeping abreast of the ceaseless parade of writings, and to relax into the enjoyable ambience of coloured light and shifting shadows.  My own experience became one of oscillating between the Textual engagement and non-specific immersion, in the event.  Once we learned from a gallery attendant that the complete textual cycles take 20 and 24 hours respectively, a third option of dropping in and out over repeat visits felt like the most feasible one of all.  Geography, time and fuel prices make that impossible for me, but it does make sense of Holzer’s habit, over the years, of placing her work in the street, where one might regularly pass by - or in very public spaces to which one might repeatedly return.

Dan Flavin, 'Untitled (To Don Judd, Colourist) 4', Illuminated Fluorescent
Tubes, 1987. 'Dan Flavin: It Is What It Is And It Ain't Nothing Else',
Ikon, Birmingham, April - June 2016

I’m reminded of my vist to Ikon’s much-lauded Dan Flavin exhibition - also in Birmingham, last year.  I’d approached it with much anticipation, but came away somewhat underwhelmed in the event.  I’d enjoyed it initially, but  had a lingering sensation of having partaken of thin gruel, if you will.  Superficially, in terms of presentation, at least - Holzer employs similar tools of minimalist formality, and of coloured light and its effect upon the physical environment.  However, Flavin ultimately supplies, in his own words, the sense that 'It Is What It Is And It Ain’t Nothing Else'.   Holzer’s injection of time, and of course, words, into the mix does exactly the opposite.

Any good French philosopher of the twentieth century can explain at tedious length just how slippery is the relationship between the ‘form’ of a word, and its freight of information or meaning.  Add in the intangibility of words expressed purely through the medium of shifting photons, and the philosophical possibilities multiply even further.  Holzer’s work may tend towards the insubstantial (her grandest statements are simply huge projections), or be limited in extent (as at mac), but dig vertically through the strata of possible meaning it implies, and it starts to feel like something altogether different.

(Slight Return) Completed Photographic Project: 'Concrete Cycle'

'Cement Cycle: Element 1 (Path)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29cm X 29 cm, 2015

Whilst doing a little turn-of-the-year housekeeping, I came across this post in a partially written state, and realised that it was a significant loose end in need of tying.  The first post of 2016 seems a good enough time to fill in the gap, - if only in the interests of moving on.  Better six months late than never, - even if there is a suggestion of OCD on my part.

'Cement Cycle: Element 2 (Path)', Digital Print On foamed On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

I alluded to my ‘Cement Cycle’ photographic project several times last year, both whilst it was in progress, and as it hung in June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition in Rugby [1.].  However, I never actually dealt with its ten separate ‘Elements’, as they appeared in their final state,  complete with final printed images, text captions, and concrete supports, (something that seemed to attract a fair bit of attention in the actual exhibition).

'Cement Cycle: Element 3 (Edge)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

Creating those concrete blocks was, in theory, the biggest technical challenge of ‘Cement Cycle’, (although, if you’d witnessed the pig's ear my ‘professional’ printer made of outputting and cutting the images to the specified dimensions, you might think otherwise).  I toyed with the idea of purpose-casting them, which might have given me complete control over the dimensions, but would have also have necessitating building at least one mold, then dealing with setting times, shrinkage and a lot of stuff I have relatively little experience with.  I knew weight would be an issue too, as they were always intended to be wall-mounted, necessitating the casting of a more complicated frame-shaped form, rather than a simple block.

'Cement Cycle: Element 4 (Edge)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

Instead, I opted to buy ten pierced, ornamental garden wall blocks, (of the sort that were so popular in my 70s childhood), and to chisel out the centres to leave a reasonably chunky concrete frame.  Repeatedly drilling the backs of these further reduced the weight, and their slightly rough texture provided an ideal key over which to build a patinated surface from thin skims of vari-coloured cement and filler.  It wasn’t a bad plan, even though it proved impossible to chisel a single one without also cracking the framing edge, often in several places.  It was easy enough to rejoin them, particularly as the open backs were blanked off with thin MDF, but harder to ensure they remained perfectly square, or absolutely uniform in size.

'Cement Cycle: Element 5 (Island)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

It was important that, within an essentially standard format, each block should have an individual identity through subtle variations in colour, patina and

Implied history, and that they loosely reflect some of the material qualities of the photographic subjects themselves.  I enjoyed drilling, chipping and repeatedly skimming them to achieve this, although power and hand sanding them back to a relatively uniform finish, wasn’t without its element of hard labour, (and a temporary breakdown in neighbourly relations).  The printed photographic images were laminated onto thin plastic board and, once eventually returned at the correct dimensions, these were attached to the front edge of the frames with strong carpet tape.  A mastic adhesive fill, and final sand, flushed them in as seamlessly as possible, and the raw cement was sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

'Cement Cycle: Element 6 (Island)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

I won’t pretend the finished results are 100% slick, (deft use of an engineering square would reveal a multitude of minor sins), but as low-tech, relatively affordable methods go, the results are pretty pleasing.  I avoided undue deadline stress by sticking to methods I could mostly control, allowing plenty of lead-time, and just getting stuck in until the job was complete.  They do give the illusion of being possibly solid, I think, and the surfaces are full of pleasing visual nuance.  I’m also pleased with the final proportions; both of each block, and of the overall set of the five pairs as they appeared on the wall in a grid formation.   Even more importantly, - nothing fell off!  I was determined to get some actual concrete or cement into the exhibition somehow, and ultimately this felt like a simple, but effective way to have realised that.

'Cement Cycle: Element 7 (Node)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

I’ve already discussed the rationale behind the images, and the different reasons why cement and concrete also recurred as a significant theme.  If they represent a desire to operate in a medium beyond painting, they also mark an involvement with something a little more consciously conceptual than usual.  It was thus, important to me to maintain a clear link with the source text of Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image Of The City’ [2.].  I liked the idea of the project resembling a kind of bogus academic or official report, despite its underlying subjectivity, and for a while, I considered applying a direct quote from Lynch’s text to each of the ten ‘Elements’.

'Cement Cycle: Element 8 (Node)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

In the end though, I chose to write my own original captions, - utilising some of Lynch’s terminology to my own less academically rigorous ends.  My hope is that anyone familiar with his (admittedly, somewhat specialist) text would know what I’m getting at, but that each phrase could just as easily represent a pure fiction.  In passing, it’s worth mentioning that this was much the same quality that my co-exhibitor Andrew Smith captured in his script for our ‘Orfeo’ video collaboration, although to somewhat more sumptuous poetic effect.  Lynch also supplied something of an oblique stimulus there, and it was indeed, Andrew who had first referred me to ‘The Image Of The City’, some months previously.

'Cement Cycle: Element 9 (Landmark)', Digital Print On Concrete, 29cm X 29 cm, 2015

One final piece in the puzzle, possibly worth noting, would be the overlap between several of the locations in ‘Cement Cycle’ and in ‘Orfeo’.  I managed to avoid direct repetition, with one notable exception, but in many cases, an image from the former might reveal a still from the latter if the camera was moved a few metres to right or left, or simply panned a few degrees.

'Cement Cycle: Element 10 (Landmark)', Digital Print On Foamex On Concrete, 29 cm X 29 cm, 2015

That’s ‘Cement Cycle’ then.  I think it achieved much of what I set out to do, and certainly pushed the envelope a little in terms of my overall practice.  That is perhaps my main reason for revisiting it here.  It represents the first time I’d considered presenting photography as a definitive, exhibitable statement within my body of work, and that’s definitely something I want to pursue further in 2016. 

'Cement Cycle', 'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood', Floor One Gallery,
Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, June 2015

The recognition that a mild conceptual strand runs sporadically through my work remains equally important, and part of that is an implied willingness to work in whatever medium seems most appropriate to a given idea.  In fact, one of my pressing current ambitions is to explore the ways that pieces in different media might evolve out of, or recycle, each other in a less compartmentalised manner.  If a self-contained project like ‘Cement Cycle’ occasionally bobs to the surface, I hope it might also be seen as evidence of a wider process of hybridisation within my overall practice.

That may all sound a bit grand or willfully oblique, I realise.  On a more superficial level, If the conceptual subtleties of ‘CC’ were a little lost on some viewers, - I can at least take some satisfaction in having turned a few heads with my concrete fettling abilities.

Right, - move on…



[1.]:  ‘Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood’.  8 June – 17 June 2015, Floor One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Little Elborow St, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV21 3BZ.

[2.]:  Kevin Lynch, ‘The Image Of The City’, Cambridge Massachusetts, The M.I.T. Press, 1960.

Fiona Banner, 'Scroll Down & Keep Scrolling' At Ikon, Birmingham (Art Woman In Word Land)

Fiona Banner, 'Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling', Artist's Publication, Vanity Press, 2015.
Cover Image Shows: 'Font', Typeface, 2015, And: 'Font', Carved Limestone, c.1880/2015

The Half Term break came and went in the traditional blur, but I did find time for a trip to Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, to take in Fiona Banner’s exhibition, ‘Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling.’  It feels like many of my most meaningful gallery experiences have happened in Nottingham or Birmingham over recent years and, just like Nottingham Contemporary, Ikon is an invaluable regional resource.  This is actually the second stimulating show of a distinctly conceptual stripe I’ve seen there this year, having already enjoyed Pavel Buchler’s ‘Honest Work’ in the spring.

Fiona Banner, 'The Bastard Word', Neon, Paper Templates, Transformers, 2007

Whilst my own practice remains rooted in the tradition of the primarily aesthetic, portable Art object, both Buchler and Banner prove there’s plenty of interest to be found in more self-consciously ideas-based stuff for me too, regardless of the medium in which it is manifested.  As noted before, I really want to have my cake and eat it.

Once upon a time, during an earlier wave of self-proclaimed Conceptualism, it seemed that an especially rigid set of ideological constraints might replace any notion of ‘the art object’ with the idea alone, expressed in the least aesthetically seductive manner possible.  Indeed, though the moment had rather passed, I have vague memories, even from my student days in the early 80s, of more than one exhibition comprised almost wholly of typewritten texts, usually requiring a thorough prior knowledge of Marxist theory.

Fiona Banner, '1909-2015', 105 Volumes Of 'Jane's All The World's Aircraft', 2015 (Ongoing)

Both Buchler and Banner seem representative of a less up-tight subsequent generation of conceptualists, (epitomised by the YBAs) for whom engagement with serious ideas is no obstacle to sly humour, sensory stimulation or the resonant artifact.  Perhaps the real issue here is the detachment of ‘ideas-based’ from the purely theoretical, and I’ve sometimes reflect that, if I want the latter, I might as well reach for a book.  As Emin, Hirst and their ilk slide into establishment respectability, (or fulfill their potential as undressed Emperors, in Hirst’s case), it’s easy enough to dismiss the YBA moment as a market-driven storm in a teacup, but the deployment, by various artists of the period, of a conceptual impulse combined with a greater component of humour, and the generation of some genuinely enjoyable objects in the process, do feel like valuable legacies.

Fiona Banner, 'Arsewoman In Wonderland', (Detail), Screen Print On Paper', 2002

Banner herself has made quite a name for herself, since first coming to the attention of many, when her ‘Arsewoman In Wonderland’ was included in 2002’s Turner Prize nominations. The perceived shock value of its pornographic content was of course typical of the period, and guaranteed to generate easy headlines and an attendant notoriety.  Installing whole decommissioned fighter jets inside Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries didn’t exactly hurt her profile, either.  For all that, this show at the Ikon is, by all accounts, her most significant British retrospective to date, and represents a number of her projects over the years.  I won’t pretend I responded to everything in the show with equal relish, but there is plenty in there that delighted, stimulated or amused me in equal measure.

There’s no doubt that the word lies at the heart of Banner’s practice, and this extends beyond content to include an engagement with the formal qualities of text.  Indeed, the first thing one meets at the show’s entrance is a carved stone font, entitled ‘Font’ and incised with examples of Banner’s own conglomerate font, (also entitled ‘Font’).  It’s a neat introduction to the multi-stranded thinking and willingness to pun that runs through her oeuvre.  Beyond the simple impulse toward amusing word play, I can’t help wondering if ‘Font’ (in either iteration), might also indicate how the actual mechanics of text might give birth to the thought, as much as the inverse.

Fiona Banner, 'The Bastard Word', Neon, Paper Templates, Transformers, 2007

Related issues of parentage emanate from another, higher-impact piece waiting within.  ‘The Bastard Word’, encapsulates its own title, with each letter formed from white neon.  We’re invited to question whether ‘Bastard’ is an expletive, a factual descriptor, or a subject under examination, and there’s a definite sense of the potential frustrations that may accompany a search for effective verbal communication.  That’s something that seems magnified by the amateurish wonkiness of each character’s formation and the scorched paper templates that back them on the wall.  Banner’s own attempts to communicate appear complicated by the need to simultaneously learn the neon-bender’s craft.  A little swearing was involved there, perhaps.

Fiona Banner, 'The Bastard Word', (Detail).

The paradoxical disjuncture between what is felt or meant, and what might be communicated verbally or textually is, of course been meat and drink to writers, philosophers and Conceptual artists alike.   Certainly, nothing about Banner’s work seems to exist on a single level alone and the cycling the neon legend through varying degrees of light intensity, further stresses the untrustworthiness of words.  Clear illumination is not always forthcoming.

In fact, the quality of lighting seems intrinsic to several of the pieces on the exhibition’s lower level.  ‘The Man’ is another impactful example of this.  The title reverses that of Banner’s book, ‘The Nam’, in which a number of notable Vietnam War films are transcribed as bald descriptions of everything that occurs.  Alongside the book, a wall papered with a collage of promotional posters represents the work at Ikon.  This allows Banner to détourn her own material, and one particular critic’s comment that the work was unreadable.  She went on to disprove this by recording a 20-hour reading, as the multi-cassette piece ‘Trance’.

Fiona Banner, (Foreground): 'Not So Much A Coffee Table Book As A Coffee Table',
Paint On Birch Ply, 2015.  (Background): 'The Man', Poster Collage, 1997.

Nearby, on the gallery floor, sits a large plywood replica of the thick volume.  For those unwilling to read it themselves, ‘The Nam’ functions mainly as a coffee table book, so, with her usual wit, the artist has supplied her own book-coffee table.  Were all of this not sufficient, the book’s eye-popping cyan & red livery and publicity material is bathed in alternate, cyan, magenta and yellow light, referencing full-colour print technology, magnifying its optical potential, and unifying the disparate elements into a somewhat more immersive experience, at a stroke.

Fiona Banner, 'The Man', (Detail), Poster Collage, 1997 

It’s worth noting that the publication of books as art pieces in their own right, (under her own Vanity Press imprint), is something Banner turns to regularly, and extends to the exhibition’s own ‘catalogue’.  Ironically, the latter eschews text altogether, being entirely image-based.  This idea of a text being simultaneously presented as an artifact clearly relates to some of this post’s early observations, and is magnified by the exhibition’s presentation of individual volumes on purpose-built plinths.

The willingness to let an idea spin off in a number of directions, in a form of fractal fee-association, is a recurring feature of Banner’s work.  It can be seen in the section of gallery devoted to ‘Mistah Kurtz - He Not Dead’.  This is something of a half-and-half experience for me, in terms of its appeal.  There are clear references to Conrad’s ‘Heart Of Darkness’, (which itself loops back to her involvement with ‘Apocalypse Now’, of course, but he graphics pasted onto the wall here are far too dimly lit to really make any real sense of, (‘Heart Of Darkness’, OK, - I get that much).  Opposite, a video plays over a panel patterned with undulating pinstripes, - a motif which is extended over other adjacent elements, including a pair of bent plywood chairs.

Still From: Fiona Banner, 'Mistah Kurtz - He Not Dead', HD Video, 2014-15

It’s the video that appeals to me most here, comprising a rapid-fire procession of still images dealing with the relationship between the City of London and the arms industry, and the sexism, conspicuous consumption and ostentatious partying that also characterise The Square Mile.  Pinstripe motifs reappear thick and fast, be it in the uniforms of city types or the repeated parallels of stern, corporate architecture [1.], and the whole thing is accompanied by a distinctly militaristic and percussive soundtrack. It’s worth noting that the starkly monochrome photos themselves were commissioned from Magnum conflict photographer, Paolo Pellegrin, and have a distinct flavour of war reportage.  For me, the video might stand alone quite satisfactorily its accompanying elements, but I am intrigued by the strategy of projecting over another piece of static imagery, as it’s something I’ve been wondering about myself, recently.

Still From: Fiona Banner, 'Mistah Kurtz - He Not Dead'.

I guess we’d all have been secretly disappointed to miss out on the ‘Oo-er, Missus’ frisson of the piece for which Banner first gained notoriety.  She doesn’t disappoint, choosing to wallpaper ‘Arsewoman In Wonderland’s’ porno-flick transcription upside-down this time, in a format recalling a cinema screen.  It’s an enjoyable, if puerile gag, meaning that any attempt to read it at length soon becomes a right pain in the arse itself, (or in the neck, at least).  On a more high-minded level, I suppose it’s a pretty effective demonstration of how all this emphasis on bald description can denude words of their emotive or expressive potential.  It seems also to spotlight the eventual banality at the heart of all functional pornography.

Fiona Banner, 'Arsewoman In Wonderland', Screen Print On Paper, 2002

If the exhibits on Ikon’s upper level left me slightly less engaged overall, they do include something I find the single most poetically charged object in the show.  ‘Work 3’ is an accurate facsimile of a multi-stage, portable scaffolding tower, cast entirely (and expertly) in clear Murano glass.  It’s a profoundly self-reflexive item, standing as a ghost of exactly the sort of work equipment needed to hang an exhibition in Ikon’s high-ceilinged upper rooms.  In fact, one would require a real Zip-Up tower to assemble this replica one.  A palpable frisson derives from the paradox between our inner-primate’s instinctive urge to scale a literal climbing frame, and the rational understanding that to do so would result in shattering catastrophe, (there’s that interface between the physical/emotive, and the objectively understood, again).  For those that still care, ‘Work 3’ is also just plain beautiful, as well as potentially lethal.

Fiona Banner, 'Work 3', Glass, 2014

Beyond an intervening gallery of mixed exhibits that, if I’m honest, made rather less impression on me, stands another object with a similar air of potential threat.  ‘1909-2015’ revisit’s Banner’s prevailing interest in military hardware obliquely, being an immense stack of every volume of the book ‘Jane’s All The World's Aircraft’, ever printed, (all the ‘…Aircraft’, - you see).  An accompanying video, ‘Jane’s’ shows Banner piling one volume after another onto the teetering pile, reinforcing our sense that, were this tower of words to fall, it would make quite an impact.

Fiona Banner, '1909-2015', Detail

Like ‘Work 3’, this piece manages to combine elegant simplicity and considerable presence, with a definite sense of foreboding.  The Health & Safety nerd in me wants to establish that, (surely), a secured steel pole must pass up the centre of the books, (mustn’t it?), whilst the more primal part of my brain itches to give it all a good shove, in the hope it doesn’t.  I read in it, a fairly erudite comment on itchy-trigger syndrome and the self-fulfilling potential of weaponry.

‘Scroll Down…’ includes two remaining video pieces that seem worthy of mention.  ‘Chinook’ documents the strangely balletic movements of a Chinook helicopter going through its paces at an air display.  I always find these huge, twin-rotor machines profoundly sinister and, there again is that combination of beauty and threat.  The piece also represents a callback to Banner’s interest in the iconography of the Vietnam War [2.].

Still From: Fiona Banner, 'Chinook', 16mm Film, Transferred To HD Video,  2013

What interests me most, however, is the revelation, in an accompanying wall-based schedule of aerobatic terms, that the Chinook was filmed at RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire.  That one-time nuclear air base [3.] is only a short distance from my Mother’s current home and, as a teenager I participated in more than one CND picket outside its gates on Air Show days [4.].  Huge, moth-like Cold War Vulcan Bombers from the base were a major feature of my childhood, as they wheeled over my home in Lincoln.  I’m bemused now by how easily potential annihilation became part of the background to our lives.

Still From: Fiona Banner, 'Chinook'.

The reference to air bases carries over into ‘Tête À Tête’, a video in which two orange aviator’s wind socks face off in a rural setting, and are alternately and partially inflated, (apparently by the breeze, but actually artificially, I’m guessing).  There’s something half-heartedly priapic about them, but I suspect the main intention is to suggest a form of conversation.  Could it be that the only real solution to all this stockpiling of weaponry, and its attendant threat of obliteration, is dialogue?  For Fiona Banner, it would seem, - it really is all about the deployment of words.

Still From:  Fiona Banner, 'Tete A Tete', HD Video, 2014

Fiona Banner:  ‘Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling’ continues until 17 January at Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HS.  I may even try to scroll down a bit further myself, if time allows.

[1.]:  A memorable image of a kneeling (and spewing?) gentleman, - arse-up, almost cries out “Kick Me!”  It appears to be the original source of all those undulating stripes.

[2.]:  In the interests of balance, it’s perhaps worth conceding that such machines are also employed in humanitarian operations, such as famine relief, as well as in the movement of military hardware or personnel.

[3.]:  The drones currently deployed in The Middle East are, I believe, now remotely controlled from the base.  Waddington, it appears, remains at the cutting edge of mechanised destruction.

[4.]:  I’ll always remember being called all sorts of names by an angry mother keen to access a photo-opp. of her toddler astride a dummy bomb casing.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to politely explain how her offspring would be vapourised, should such a device ever be deployed.