BLACK MIRROR: ART AS SOCIAL SATIRE

Another Exhibition I visited in the past few week is BLACK MIRROR: ART AS SOCIAL SATIRE at Saatchi Gallery. The exhibition explore art’s role in social satire, and how political uncertainty has influenced art of recent years.

Featuring the work of 26 contemporary artists, using a range of media including collage, caricatures, photography and installation, the exhibition shows how satire can provide both light relief as well as unsettling commentary on the tumultuous, divisive climate of modern-day politics.

Bedwyr Williams “Walk A Mile in My Shoes”

In Walk A Mile In My Shoes, Williams presents a display case boasting 45 pairs of used shoes. Not just any old footwear however – each bootie is Williams’s own whopping size 13.

Inviting the audience to share in his own problematics of podiatry, viewers are encouraged to try the gear on: an act that invariably relays the humour and embarrassment of floppy footed clowns and sasquatch clumsiness. The importance that each pair of shoes was purchased second hand underlies the key themes of Williams’s piece – with the knowledge that there are at least over 40 other Hobbit-pawed souls in the world – Walk A Mile In My Shoes celebrates diversity, inclusion, and community; through the simple practicalities of footwear, Williams extols the values of tolerance and individual difference.

2006 Installation with size 13 shoes, written notes, poster, shelving and foot-rests

SELECTED WORKS BY JOHN STEZAKER

John Stezaker’s work re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. In his collages, Stezaker appropriates images found in books, magazines, and postcards and uses them as ‘readymades’. Through his elegant juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings.

JAMES HOWARD “Untitled”

“The ‘schizo-core’ mechanic is my process of manipulating digital material to open up new ways of thinking. When you realign disparate things, and allow them to be multiple, it makes a very fertile ground. Social norms are turned inside-out, leading to a tangle of surreal juxtapositions which expose all the energy of what it means to be living right now in the universe.” –

REFELCTION

Between all the 25 artists works in the exhibition William, Stezaker and Howard’s works were the most inspiring for me in terms of how they can help me explore more ideas with my practice.

I loved that each artist has an element that I can connect with my practice, like in William’s work the art installation and inviting the audience to be part of the experience through stepping in his shoes before judging him, and the shared stories is something am so keen about. I always keep mentioning the idea of having my work transformed to an interactive experience with the audience and seeing William’s work and earlier before that at Charlie’s brown exhibition I started to feel that a clearer picture of what I want to experiment is coming up.

Stezaker’s use of photographic images is another thing I always have been fascinated with in art and have been trying to experiment. His choices of images and the way he jusxtaposition is so unique. Finally the work of Stezaker in terms of multipling is something I keep on experimenting in my practice.

I can say the work of these three artists and seeing it in real life, gave me a sort of direction and idea on where and how I wanna go next with my project art work expermientations.