Reviews:
2 Clunbury Str
London N1 6TT
waterside contemporary is pleased to present Animal with a Language, a solo exhibition by Oreet Ashery.
October – December, 2014
Within a flesh toned environment, hypnotic sound, text, videos and assemblages, Ashery’s objects and actors acquire meaning through associative transmission and direct expression. The gallery space becomes a codified system for the flow of subconscious excess, exhaustive languages of protest, grassroots actions and questionable cultural appropriations.
Reactivating The Clean and The Unclean, the protagonists of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s revolutionary 1921 play Mystery-Bouffe, Ashery collaboratively produced a collection of ponchos and headgear. These humble forms of dress made from ubiquitous cleaning materials – dish cloths, wipes, dusters – are the uniforms of speculative purists and partisans, exploited labourers and heroes. Adorned with this couture collection, the cast expose themselves to the inevitable risk of becoming objectified fashion icons.
Another of Ashery’s characters is the Paranormal Pig, drawn from her recent project Party for Freedom. Here, the pig appears as a nonchalant woman ready for roasting. In another incarnation, the pig becomes an elevated sculptural figure and elsewhere reproduced as a snout-print, a ready logotype.
Within the troubling global condition of The Un/Clean, Ashery interrogates the paradoxical coexistence of revolt and desire towards the unclean and animalistic, the annihilation of the self and others.
© All photographs belong to the artist. Photographs by Jack Woodhouse