This one is a grower. The work on display at Blackpool’s Supercollider space isn’t as immediate as some of the gallery’s previous shows, but take your time and read the blurb provided and the show comes together quite neatly and the work becomes focused when you understand its context.
Wiolators are a European arts collective who have braved the icy seas to arrive in Blackpool on one of the hottest days on record. They came with no fixed agenda as to what art they would show and created the whole show from their short but quite insightful experience of Blackpool. Words like ‘intense’, ‘chaotic’ and ‘frenetic’ were used by them as they absorbed then reinterpreted their experiences of the town.
There are seven pieces in the exhibition that range from video and sound work to a fruit-based work that boggles the eyes and on the opening evening literally made them water, but more of that later.
My favourite work in the show is ‘Our luck line is shallow and short’. Anne Katerine Sorup visited a number of Blackpool’s palm readers and created a series of friendship bracelet lengths reflecting the life expectancy of the different members of the collective as foreseen by the various promenade Gipsy Palm Lees and Co. If I was the third person down I would be asking for my money back as the length is disturbingly short.
Thordis Erla Zoega, from Iceland, responded to the postcards that festoon the town, creating two pigeon English phrases that make you reconsider the short use of language the postcard encourages you write with their limited space; ‘here I is’ indeed.
The video piece, a collaboration between Judith Kleinemeier and Nadja Voorham, ‘Basic Group Exhibition Workout’, references Blackpool’s health spa origins and throws them into sharp relief against Blackpool’s sugar coated and boozy excesses.
Boozy excesses are inherent in both of the next two works. ‘I’, which is a vodka bottle with a live lilly sticking out, is paired with a distressingly depressingly un-PC energy drink called ‘Pussy’ which really speaks for its vulgar self.
Maria Gondek gives us the most visual of the show’s works. ‘Two for joy’, consist of two melons attached to the wall; melons with taps in; taps that dispense vodka. It’s an arresting sight and speaks of the seasides saucy postcard heritage and its obsession with alcoholic extremity.
Emilia Bergmark creates an odd mix of bird song and muzak with her work, ‘Blackbird’. The odd overlaying of the natural sounds of birdsong and the ever-present music that Blackpool emits is quite charmingly placed next to a small bird hole and peg. Quiet and assured, it sits in the far corner of the gallery, so don’t miss it.
Supercollider’s white space and obvious shop heritage is particularly fitted to the audio work of Wiolators. Christopher Holleron’s work ‘Wiolator radio’ plays crazed and disjointed sounds that become commonplace and banal after repeated listening. This reduces the sounds to background noise, echoing the non-stop bombardment of local radio and shopping muzak that washes over you and is filtered out whenever you pop out for a pint of milk. Radio Wave’s ‘best mix’ it may not be, but it serves the same numbing effect.
Overall, it is a great show. It’s an exciting and risky concept, to bring nothing and create a show in a day. Thankfully the risk paid off and a gallery of diverse and interesting work is the result. I have to admit to needing a little more of the background to the process of the work before really appreciating it. Hopefully this review, altFaithful, will pave the way for you to enjoy the various sights and sounds that are on offer at the Cookson Street gallery.
Wiolators: Blackpool Edition runs until July 26.
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