If Mishka Henner’s work is photography, we all could be photographers. Because nearly every image in the young Belgian-Brit’s show is sourced from the internet. Vast oil fields, immense cattle farms, military bases – all are publicly available satellite images that he just got by Googling.
So it’s another step up (or down) the theft-as-art ladder that Marcel Duchamp erected with his urinal ‘Fountain’ nearly 100 years ago. Henner’s massive ‘Oil Fields’ and ‘Feedlots’ images are striking and beautiful, and abstract at first – just washes of colour, geometric grids and thick lines – like accidental expressionist paintings. But as you approach, you can start to make out sports stadiums, houses, oil wells, roads. It becomes clear that the images are meant to play on our fears of big business and ecological self-destruction. Henner is showing how we’ve ravaged the land for financial gain, and it leaves you feeling uneasy.
The ‘Fifty-One US Military Outposts’ series comprises images of military bases mounted on headstone-like plinths. There’s an obvious statement being made here, as well as a moral judgement that’s heavy-handed and overplayed, though still effective.
The basement gallery features a variety of works based on ‘scam-baiting’ – replying to those ‘Nigerian prince’ emails and making the scammers perform outlandish tasks as they try to steal your money. Banners saying ‘imateef’, ‘plonker’ and ‘100% risk free’ hang alongside photos of African scammers holding them. Henner was implicit in getting these people to pose, and while it’s funny, it’s also exploitative and mean. There’s no doubt that internet scammers are in the wrong, but forcing people from deprived countries to demean themselves for your entertainment – or your art – leaves a pretty nasty taste in the mouth. Especially since Henner appears to take the moral high ground when it comes to his own pilfered images.
Eddy Frankel