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… gonna be all right – a review

In the early 70s I read a magazine article on Joseph Beuys and his family at home. While everybody was watching Star Trek on the telly the author got quizzed over the riddle whether the household’s fridge was genuinely a fridge rather than being an art object of some kind disguised as a fridge.

This memory flash-backed to me yesterday when hoovering the carpet in the Hive Gallery. Steering the machine between the objects of Everything’s Great, an art installation, the same puzzling question seemed appropriate. Does the cleaner or at least the object in question, the hoover, belong to the art work rather than being a mundane cleaning appliance plus operator?

Everything’s Great, an artistic project by Manchester-based artists Jennifer McDonald, Louise Woodcock, Helen Shanahan and Gary Fisher and on show at the Hive Gallery, is a faraway throw from being easily recognized as art.

There are no framed pictures, no sculptures as such or any other typical exhibits confirming this as a fine art show. Instead there are cuddly toys, shiny geese, childish dolls dressed like Tadzio’s sisters in Visconti’s Death in Venice and three life-size reindeers with glittery hoofs in an ambiguous figuration. There’s even something that resembles a pile of animal poo which makes kids shiver.

The installation as a whole has the appearance of a stage set or a mise-en-scène without actors, built into a spacious retail unit. As the Hive Gallery is located in a shopping centre and surrounded by a variety of retail shops the artist’s intention may have been to mimic a shop ambient. Though, it looks more like a fairytale gone sour when one inspects the details more closely. I saw centre customers standing on the door step and staring into the installation and probably asking themselves what the heck am I looking at.

Helen Shanahan used the term Retail Therapy to describe the approach. Certainly the artists had in mind to reflect the doomy economic, social and cultural cloud waffling over consumerist places like this with a playful counter reaction. Shop closures all over the place are a vigorous reminder of what is going on. Those first grade retailers are increasingly replaced by pound shops, charity shops and pawnbrokers. In that sense the artists ironically used a cheesy style parody in their invite text for the opening:

Super fun! Cash in hand! Mega discounts! Crazy bargain insane prices! Sexy, fun deals! Super sale bargains! Mega 50% super insane, craz…y sale!

WIN WIN WIN!!!

And Bob Marley echoes over the centre’s sound system: Don’t worry about a thing,   … Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

But certainly there’s more to it. Looking closely one discovers a deeper level of disturbance. There’s a vile kinkiness to it all. A teddy hanging from the ceiling fashions a black face mask. A cuddly toy fox sports its copulative organ, erected. A lion in a submissive position with deep red open lips. A toilet frame with a colourful, waxy output on its bottom containing wasps, hair and a sink’s plug.

These slightly transgressive parts are accompanied by other expressive elements like three shiny, hanging geese representing three historic English respectively British queens. Or the infinitive tape loop sound installation from Gary Fisher playing “I remember …” again and again.

Actually these parts represent more significantly the materials and subject matters the four artists are usually working with. For this exhibition these former artistic styles got coupled with a shop-like outlet which at first appears like toy store – just on a first glance, though.

Everything’s Great was on show from the 28^th January until 4^th March 2012.

A special exhibition page with more photos can be found here.