Never mind the leaflet blurb about consumerism; the mechanics of buying never make more than a peripheral impact on these five artists work. Its there if you want to look for it, but object based art will inevitability have to be read against a background of similar forms of display. The supermarket is in everyone’s consciousness.
Certainly Caroline Russell’s ‘Display 20’ actually came out of the supermarket, but it speaks more about the structure of the fitting – the strip of orange which runs along the shelf edge into which prices are clipped – than consumerism itself. Her other works reinforce this, surgical sheets opened out for inspection, for viewing as new minimalism. Forms of display are not enough of interest for Jyll Bradley, though.
‘Tiresias’ comprises four photographs mounted on lightboxes, but the motivation behind them is a complex theory of sexuality. There are three couples – lesbian, gay and straight – and a policeman mounted ona bicycle (!) all pictured as if participating in a piece of filmed Dickins. Lettering which is both title and location of the photographs adds to the sensation of fake Victorian. ‘Charing Cross Road, St. Martin’s Lane; apparently the photographs are contemporary and un-staged. Jyll Bradley roams the West End, the nostalgia costumes look to originate in the midnight world of clubbing. The lightboxes are slightly aged with tissue paper, but it takes little distortion to find the appearance of Victorian England in London now, and not just the obvious similarities like the beggars on Hungerford Bridge, but this reappearance of top hats and tails.
The complexity of the work overshadows that of her compatriots in the gallery around her. Cathy Watkins photographs of twee figurine which are not distanced enough from their subject and so, twee. The sculpture of Dean Whatmuff and Michael Landy is put together well and looks nice but doesn’t manage to go beneath simple appearance. The disturbing realism of Bradley’s lightboxes keeps drawing you back; they don’t need propping up with theory.