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'Willy Loman: The Rise and Fall (Gluttons)', c-type print, 2009
If Yinka Shonibare's latest body of photographs, sculptures and drawings on greed and human fallibility are to be believed, the current poster boys of high capitalism could be in for a rough ride. Taking his cue from 'Death of a Salesman' Shonibare builds a testingly tangential, characteristically provocative cautionary tale around Arthur Miller's protagonist Willy Loman. Here, in impeccably tailored batik, the 'everyman' appears to have died in the first photographically documented car crash only to arrive in Dante's nine circles of hell and become a martyr figure for the disenfranchised captains of failing industry.
Theatre and absurdity have become essential ingredients in Shonibare's critical mode of storytelling, but the point can get lost in the panto. The busted auto, with its FTSE plates, is a great metaphor for the objects and ideas we buy into, yet you half expect to find Dick Van Dyck, not dapper, headless Loman, mangled amid the wreckage of this once 'fine four-fendered friend'. However, one is rarely distracted from the inferno - of Dante's literary purgatory or grim workaday interiors - in Shonibare's consummately constructed photo series. In each case the Loman actor appears to have 'Quantum Leap'-ed, like Scrooge, through some terrible art history human tableaux.
The 'Climate Shit' drawings in the back room more than make up for the implied faults and too-cute miniaturisation of three Loman models in residence (repentently posed on desks whose tops are carved with excerpts from the congressional testimonies of US car industry CEOs). Shonibare's stunning collages might be described as a personal lament on the current state of things: the earthly costs that cannot be fiscally quantified. In comparison, the show of props and frock coats next door feels like an over-edited production of an all-too familiar story.
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