 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||
Rupert
White works in diverse media, but certain common themes recur, and landscape
and representations of the landscape are usually the starting point.
Many works use natural forces like the wind or animals as collaborators
in their making, in an attempt to question the nature of authorship and
in the process the notion of man's mastery over the natural world. These
works include 'Collaboration (gull)', in which vertical lines left by
bird-droppings are used to make painted grids on rocks, the video 'Drag-drawing
(Eames)' in which the drawing is made by the wind as a weather balloon
drags an Eames chair across the beach, and the video 'Drawing Room' in
which movements of the wind in the trees are translated into a drawing
on paper by means of a string mechanism.
Other works combine representations of the landscape with associated symbols
of our aspirations to live simple, natural, authentic lives. The implication
is that these aspirations are doomed to fail, and we are destined to live
with the guilt of that failure.
Examples include 'Magic Tree' in which a giant air-freshener in the shape
of a fir-tree is covered with original drawings and prints by St Ives
modernists and with comical clippings of middle-aged naturists from magazines.
The installation 'The Good Life' covers similar territory. In one of the
videos that make up this multi-part work the artist writes his name obsessively
whilst holding the pen with his foot. Nearby is a drawing of a giant daisy
losing it petals, used as a symbol of the failure of utopian ideals in
the 70s sitcom of the same name. This drawing was also made on a car that
drove around London and the South of England over the course of a year
such that it too slowly lost its petals one by one.
The work also reaches in other directions. For example some pieces directly
reference previous celebrated artworks, in a way that emphasises the fact
that there is a different political context for them now. This includes
a remaking of Richard Longs 'Line made by walking' on a landfill site,
and Hans Haacke's 'Condensation cube' such that the the original sculpture
is turned into a potentially life-saving object: a still. In some communities
across the world solar-stills are used for making drinking water.
In more recent years interventions in out-of-town shopping centres have
been used as a way of presenting similar ideas in a different context.
For example, 'Emoticon (Argos)' is a projection of an animated .GIF of
a crying face projected onto a well-known UK discount shopping chain.
