Dumbwaiter

21 Nov 2009 - 13 Dec 2009

JTG in association with Fieldgate Gallery presents:

DUMBWAITER

Private View Friday 20th November 6pm-9pm
Open Wednesday - Sunday 12-6pm

As it happens, there is no Dumb Waiter in the building, and one could hardly be imagined, but it remains a useful curatorial metaphor for passing from one environ to another. Each artist is given space to develop a site-specific installation or video projection, and in some cases will be asked to produced an idiosyncratic response to the space. Harold Pinter's play of the same name takes place in a basement room where it appears that two hit men, Ben and Gus, are awaiting "orders" regarding their next unknown victim. Simultaneously comic and threatening requests emanate from the unseen operator of the dumbwaiter who appears to be "senior" partner Ben's intended victim at the end of the play. This exercise in semantics and menace corresponds to much of the work in the exhibition. The word 'dumb' in Dumb Waiter implies a stupidity and/or muteness. Yet within this pejorative term of abuse there is a resistance. Muteness has power; it doesn't return the audio equivalent of the gaze. It refuses dialogue.

Much of the artwork here exploits this paradox. Language is obfuscated, while sound/noise disguises primal anxieties and architectural interventions demarcate zones. In the work of Amanda Beech, language obscures meaning as it becomes concrete, overlaying sumptuous projected video images. This contrasts with the installations of Margaret O'Brien, Richard Ducker and Lee Holden where they operate at the pre-linguistic with Kristevian visceral utterances. Igloo (Bruno Martelli & Ruth Gibson) creates installations of virtual landscapes that conflate the imagined with the real as they develop ever-overlapping simulacrums through the language of the video game. Tod Hanson, Alex Schady, and Denise Hawrysio all respond architecturally to the space, using direct interventions, getting their hands dirty with the stuff of the real world, often with a charming wit or Baroque exuberance.

In a number of Hollywood films, the hero escapes via the dumbwaiter, thus travelling efficiently from one floor [set] to the next. The exhibition's curatorial oversight is just this intention of moving between one total environ to the next, within the space of the building. In this way, the viewer could perceive themselves as the dumbwaiter, travelling silently, unseen, between the rooms/zones, developing a dialogue as one passes from one to the next. Alternately, as in Pinter's play, it could be the curators who are the dumbwaiter, delivering increasingly unhinged instructions to the artists. When Gus leaves the room to get a drink of water in the bathroom, the dumbwaiter's speaking tube whistles. Ben listens carefully. We gather from his replies that their victim has arrived and is on his way to the room. Ben shouts for Gus, who is still out of the room. The door that the target is supposed to enter from flies open, Ben rounds on it with his gun, and Gus enters, stripped of his jacket, waistcoat, tie and gun. There is a long silence as the two stare at each other before the curtain comes down.

Images from Dumbwaiter

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