A Last Waltz with Aid and Abet

The final group show at Aid and Abet was a last gasp effort by the Associate artists connected with the organisation. I had intended to go thrice, however the roof blew off in some particularly vigorous semi-hurricane with the result that I could only visit twice. Apologies to Chloe Leaper and Marina Velez whose work I missed. I will catch up with them later. They are not exactly unknown and tender blossoms.

I had never really been to a show where the work needed by dint of the brief, to comment upon the upcoming destruction of the venue that currently housed it. I was not sure how to approach it. Would it be a wake?
I was pondering this fact as I waited to be served in Britain's most dangerous pub, The Flying Pedestrian. Hipsters to the left of me, bohos to the right. Ahead of me , the beatniks clicking their fingers and ordering Daddy-Ohs as if they were going out of fashion. Their pointy beards gleamed with menace.

Edging politely past some elderly punks ( I imagine The Exploited are getting on a bit by now) I sat somewhere quiet and looked at a peeling Prunella Clough poster. I'd seen that show at Kettle's Yard. I drank a beer and wondered if these artists at Aid and Abet would last as long or garner similar acclaim. It's a generational thing I guess. Clough has had her day.She's unlikely to have more. The daisies she is pushing up are being painted by an equally ghostly Ivon Hitchens.

So clutching rosary beads in one hand and a do not resusitate sign in the other I nimbly but desperately crossed the road and after recovering my wits, sauntered casually into the space. Alas I wasn't the first. Others had sauntered in before me and were engaged in a sort of Strictly Come Sauntering competition.

The finger food looked a bit bizarre, but I figured it was just finger food, busy self referencing itself on some shiny plates. I bought a beer and tried to saunter, but I was in the company of the Masters of the Saunter. I merely mooched.

Erica Bohr's Mixology: The Laboratory of Future Possibilities struck me as being rather effective in this context. We all hand out booze at wakes. Bohr had created a stall /bar. Infused with a tropical decadence and with more than a hint of a B52's pop video, awash with plasticky flora and fauna, some of which was inflatable. People clustered, and sauntered away clutching cocktails in purple plastic cocktail glasses. I watched them carefully for evidence of non-sauntering due to intoxication but these people were good. I am prepared to guess that this particular cocktail, being handed out by Bohr in her alarming eyewear,was called Demolition. I kept my distance and watched the proceedings, it was a piece of art after all, and allowed Rirkrit Tiravanija to pop into my head briefly. Curry and strong booze, what could be better? They should meet and open a gastro pub. They could call it the The Relational Aesthetics Arms. I would go. Often.

I am rather hoping she will be able to do something similar at a later date. Bigger. Brasher. Brighter.More booze, stronger than anyone would anticipate. With hotdogs. Even more garlands and plastic flowers. This looks like the type of artwork you could gig around the country. And it was life affirming. Just what you need at a wake.

Erica Bohr. Mixlology.

So, I pottered off into the telly room. This place is dedicated to projections and videos. Georgie Grace had set up a whole bunch of monitors , different sizes, suspended in blackness not quite pure night, but dark enough. Sequenced across the monitors a wrecking ball did its thing; pixelly internetally, kind of blurry and not quite warped. Walls fell down in clouds of dust. They were grey, subdued and slowed. Billowed as if in a dream.

This was real demolition. You could see it. On lots of monitors. A melancholic response to the brief, but an effective one. Sure, it could have been bigger and louder, but frankly, if you can wire a plug and edit video,   then you are one up on me and need to be worshipped from afar.

 The soundtrack was called Wrecking Ball. By some popstrel or another. Miley someone. Does that ring a bell? Stretched and manipulated the soundtrack came across as woe laden groans. Or spiritual chanting. Or some kind of orgasm. It seemed apt, and the music was up to date enough to add its tuppence-ha'penny to the proceedings. Relevence is all. It struck me as personal too. Almost a painter's response somehow. Or an illustrator's. These are not remarks to denigrate but a recognition of sensibilities that are integral to any graphic fine artist. Nicely edited. Compact. To the point.

Georgie Grace. Don't you ever say I just walked away. (detail )

Lisa Wilken's drawings hit the spot. I think they were drawings. Smaller than postcards they had embedded themselves in creamy , slightly foxed sheets of paper. Right in the middle. They seemed part of the support, not an addition to the surface.

Once again we are faced with scenes of an implied destruction. Quite beautiful graphite miniatures depict roiling clouds of brick dust. Demolition. Or bombing. The result is the same. I worried for these images in terms of their conservation. I hope they are stashed somewhere nice and dry. What a pity that will not happen to the venue. But, you have to face it. This a lyrical response to, I guess the redevelopment of the area. A very quiet and subtle one. These drawings belong in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Somebody buy them and donate them. They are better than her previous work in my opinion.

Lisa Wilkens. In the end / In the beginning.

Normally, sculpture is a thing I try to avoid when walking around a space - sending the Degas flying is not a good look.
I didn't need to worry about accidentally backing into Robert Good's work as it was basically a wooden chair. Tatty and battered looking. With an inadequate cushion. On a damp looking piece of carpet. Had I backed into it and sat down I may well have been moderately comfy. However I would still have been at risk.
I'm quite keen on flying and had Good tethered a few more black, helium filled balloons to the chair, I am sure we could have achieved lift off. I was reminded of that daft American who, years ago, tethered his garden chair to a considerable number of helium filled balloons. I believe he carried a gun to shoot out selected balloons in case of excess altitude. He floated off and the Air National Guard sent up a fighter to investigate.
My feeling is that Good's work should have floated. A bit of sleight of hand, some careful technical jiggery pokery could have done it I guess. But I am guessing that was not the point. What he did achieve was a startling looking object using found and ordered in materials. The piece looked ready to carry a sitter off to a more Heavenly destination.
Coming back to the balloons I thought, perhaps anti-balloons? Featured in an old Doctor Who episode, or better still, The Prisoner, they would have exploded and rendered everyone insensible. Quite a nexus of   meanings for a old chair with a whole bunch of balloons floating above it. When I returned later on, the helium had left the building. Perhaps the deflated funereal signifiers are still there, like discarded novelty condoms.

Robert Good.  A Collection for Aid and Abet.

What do you call wallpaper? It's wallpaper, right? Wrong. If you are called Patsy Rathbone, then it is a wallpaper piece. I have been keen on artists' wallpaper ever since Robert Gober's Male and Female Genetalia wallpaper pieces. A great title and it does what it says on the tin, as it were.

Rathbone's wallpaper consists of reddish/brownish images on white. The images feature scenes of flooded out buildings, ruined houses,displaced people tugging suitcases, isolated trees. Scenes of ruin. Repeated. All along the corridor and on the exterior walls of the office.
Rathbone uses wallpaper as a bit of a flag waver for domestic and not so domestic goings on. When I was a kid my early life was spent around bombsites and demolished buildings. It was not unusual to have the eye caught by damaged housing stock. It wasn't unusual to see exposed walls. And there you would see it. Wallpaper clinging. A last peek at the domestic. Someone's home laid bare. So I had some affection for this piece. Yes, the imagery addressed ruination and future demolition. You could just about at a stretch say that the images pointed to a future redevelopment except the imagery looked a bit too developing worldish to me. given the context. But I am just a mad old man to whom nobody listens. Besides, everything in the show, at least that which I had seen, was a lyricism for the doomed.

Patsy Rathbone. Work of Art ( detail )

Susie Olczak work looks like it may go on to have an independent life well after the demise of the building. The pieces looked a bit like door frames and window frames casually come across at a builder's merchant.

The structures themselves are elegant and well made. They are of a human scale. You could handle them. Perspex and wood. Practical, constructed of practical materials.

And yet. These objects are wonky. They look like they have taken a hefty whack. They seem to be acting as anticipatory expressions of structural failure. They have taken the first knock, rather than the building which houses them. They are however expertly made. Expertly warped. Not an easy trick to pull off I should think. I have shelves at home which are similarly inaccurate, due to my ineptitude with tools, rather than intention. The formal values of these works will remain long after the associations with Aid and Abet have worn off.

Susie Olczak.  Divide.

Saudade. Missing, longing, nostalgia, yearning, feeling an absence. These are some of the meanings around the mysterious Portuguese word "saudade". Just pop along to Lisbon to discover the sentimental wail fest known as Fado. Or go north to Porto. Stout, elderly ladies with powerful lungs and loud, emotional, singing voices communicate feelings of a desperate separation from a loved one or a homeland. Beer is drunk. Custard tarts known as Pasteis de Natas are consumed. Grown men cry.

I hope Graig Need wasn't crying during the installation of the projection piece which has as its title this particularly loaded Portuguese word.

The work consisted of three projections, and one floor based structure. Two projections were screened on a wall. They were conjoined. Side by side with a slight overlap. The third projection wrapped itself around the structure on the floor. The works were wedged into a brick and concrete space, next to a couple of original fixtures: a hand basin and a sink for the dishes. The projections themselves, of fairly bland shopping centres, parked cars and the odd hint of a pedestrian, looked a bit dated. Reminded me of where I used to live. In Porto. Not far from the football stadium and handy for the station.

The combination of projected light and industrial brick and in particular the concrete on the floor, was an effective one. Washes of light were soaked up. Details were blurred. I thought of watercolours.Fuzzy at the edges. The sinks added a touch of solidity, a bit of visual back and forth. A touch of the Jim Dines. The title says it all of course, even if you couldn't guess from the seemingly nostalgic imagery. Once again we feel a bit sad for the poor old warehouse space. We are supposed to feel this sadness after the demolition not before it. Another thing I noticed is that my spelling of the crucial word differs.This could mean that Need's title is mispelled,(and indeed it is), or it could be a completely different word and I have got the wrong end of the stick. Let us go back to the beginning, Let's start with, "Need has entitled his work Suadade, a word that so closely resembles the Portuguese word Saudade that I am compelled to consider the work in terms of an implied nostalgia." There, that should do it.

Craig Need. Saudade, ( detail )

On a nice clean rectangular plinth are some vertical clay forms. They look vaguely domestic in scale. I have heard the word peristaltic in connection with Lawrence Epps' work, although I prefer the word extruded. The forms looked freshly made. I wanted to poke one with a biro to get an idea of its material qualities. But no. I could sense a potential Mr Bean catastrophe ahead.

Instead I stepped away from the plinth, ( "Freeze! Step away from the plinth!" ) The forms had a phallic quality to them. They reminded me of 88mm anti-tank shells. They reminded me of cacti. What is left but to be seduced by the tactile qualities so apparent? You can look but can't touch. I used to know girls like that. When I was a kid at school.

As a group of forms gathered together they compellingly dominated the immediate space around them, they had after all, been under pressure lately. Quite a lot of pressure. Rather like the artists in the show and the directors of the space. The clay forms had been forced through a space in order to stand in this one as mute witnesses. The piece was called Unreconstructed. In the space the name has different and more poignant associations. Outside the space this piece will acquire a less fraught signification.

Lawrence Epps.  Unreconstructed.

So, what does it all add up to, this show in this space? Well, I am not sure it was the best show I have ever seen, but certainly better than a lot. I liked the sense of accumulated sensitivities marshalled in response to a tricky brief. I liked the fact that the artists were youngish and relatively freshly minted. I am too lazy to check how many of the artists had come out of Anglia Ruskin. Some had I know. In some ways Anglia Ruskin's fine art degee courses are still finding their feet. Perhaps it's the curse of Cambridge, but this gave some of the work an added intensity. You come out of Cambridge Art School these days, you have something to prove. I don't think these people are thinking of turning amateur anytime soon.

I hope they stick together and form a sort of Anglian Mafia. Rather a neat name for a bunch of artists connected by relationships and attitudes as opposed to a house style.

So, say goodbye to a great space, founded and run by enthusiastic professionals, who have I am sure, by taking on the responsibility in the first place, widened their skills set, and had a ball along the way. I feel I am not sticking my neck out too much by saying that Aid and Abet showed some of the coolest work around. I use the word cool deliberately. As opposed to the word entertaining. Cool art happens in spaces like the one soon to be pulled down. Thankfully this business model of using limited lifespan industrial spaces is a well trodden path. It is due to this that Cambridge is a little more on the art map than it used to be.

This city needs Aid and Abet, and this city needs its own Biennale.

Anyway, onward and upward as they say. Don't forget to check:

Chloe Leaper, Lawrence Epps, Craig Need, Susie Olczak, Patsy Rathbone, Robert Good, Lisa Wilkens,

Georgie Grace, Erica Bohr and last but by no means least, Marina Velez.