At first, this show seems distinctly uninviting to anyone not deeply in the fold with today’s art scene. It fills three floors with austere works by artists I mostly haven’t heard of. Found objects, subtle installations and elliptical messages abound here; it’s enough to draw a groan from any contemporary art cynic.
In the first room, dodging between Gilli Tal’s installation of looming streetlamps and hearing what sounds like an urban field recording by Solomon Garçon, you might feel like you’re navigating a party full of strangers. No artwork is given any context beyond a spreadsheet-like booklet containing the artist’s biographical details and the artwork’s medium, date of creation and exhibition history.
That last, seemingly unimportant detail brings the show to life. Reading through the handout’s fourth column, you’ll see the names of a number of grassroots artist-run exhibition spaces. Almost every artist in the show has been involved in or shown their work at such a venue. Many are now defunct and I’m sure none were ever as well-appointed as this gallery. It is this detail – call it the show’s DIY-pedigree – that animates Fake Barn Country.
This is an exhibition about exhibitions
This is an exhibition about exhibitions and about exhibition-making as an act of passion, generosity and curiosity shared between artists. Every image, sound and object here is like a mushroom grown from a vast, international and intergenerational network of mutual support and encouragement that expands far beyond this gallery’s walls.
In a world of superstar artists and mega-dealers, it’s easy to forget that iconoclastic (and, all too often, transient) spaces like the ones celebrated here are where art really happens. They are incubators for novel ideas and radical projects. Yes, their content can be esoteric and alienating, but that’s because they’re doing something new, prizing imagination over accessibility. These aren’t shiny, colourful, above-the-sofa abstract paintings because this isn’t a commercial gallery; it’s the nexus of an ongoing artist-to-artist dialogue.
The exhibition contains more than a few moments of brilliance that you don’t need to be in the know to appreciate. Highlights include Kitty Kraus’ suspended Lidl trolley handlebar that spins antically in front of a first-floor mirror, Yuki Kimura’s crystalline Russian doll-like arrangement of three cognac glasses and a monumental work by Gilbert & George whose exhibition history fills a whole page. Their gallery, the Gilbert & George Centre, is just down the road in Spitalfields.
On the top floor is a sculpture by Stuart Middleton that extends across two rooms. It’s a horizontal totem made up of painted panels, chopping boards, a hatstand, a washing-up bowl, a pair of jeans, a rotary blade and a piggy bank among other things. To get it up here must have been a feat of logistics. Now it stands, a microcosm of the whole exhibition, as a monument to the dogged and generous DIY spirit with which artists mount exhibitions for each other.