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Ryan Gander "It’s a right Heath Robinson affair" (A stuttering exhibition in two parts)

Press release

Ryan Gander « It's a right Heath Robinson affair (a stuttering exhibition in two parts) » March 14 - April 18, 2009 and until May 2 at Kadist Art Foundation

(...)

Could you expand on the title of the exhibition?

Ryan Gander: It’s a right Heath Robinson affair. It’s an English phrase from the 1970s. Heath Robinson was a cartoonist, a satirist. He was also an inventor but a clumsy inventor, a stupid, ridiculous inventor. Everything that he made and everything that he drew was like a machine that was far too complicated. It functioned but it was more complicated than it needed to be and it looked too complicated. It had a do-it-yourself aesthetic, things stuck together with Gaffa tape and tied together with pieces of string. He was like a mad professor type of inventor. So when people say “It’s a right Heath Robinson affair”, it means that the thing they are talking about performs the function, but is more complicated or elaborate than it needs to be.

So how is this title or phrase related to the works that will be presented in the exhibition?

RG: It’s related to the thinking. The thinking does more loops in my head than it needs to and, I guess, because a lot of the thought loops bring me back to the same place I began. I have to go around though, all the way around to get back to realise what it was I doing. So conceptually the thoughts are a bit like a Heath Robinson affair. The ideas feel a bit like they have been broken and have been repaired.

Is this method of working connected to the fact that the show is in two parts?

RG: In a way. It was really clear to me at the beginning that I didn’t want to make an exhibition that played on that obvious fact that it is in two parts, it would be a bit unchallenging. We’ve seen a lot of artists recently that have done an exhibition between two places and from what I’ve seen the shows all seemed like that condition was the distinguishing factor in the decision-making. So I’ve been aligning myself with the thinking that you can have an exhibition in two places and it not be directly about that condition, but that it can still naturally inform the way that you make the work. And it informs the work in ways, but maybe I’ve tried to camouflage it. The second part of the title is (A stuttering exhibition in two parts) because rather than having a recto and verso to the exhibition or having an inside and outside or making a… what’s the word? Two sides…?

Dichotomy?

RG: Yeah. That word. I can never say it. I think of the exhibition like stuttering. So I try to say something once and then I try again… When you stutter you st, st, st, st, st, st, st… stutter. And every time a stutter happens with each pronunciation of the st, st, st, st… the meaning changes or the idea evolves.

(...)

Excerpt from an interview with Ryan Gander at gb agency, Paris on February 25th, 2009, published in the booklet of the exhibition, available at gb agency and Kadist Art Foundation.

Exhibition views at gb agency

A number of public death announcements in the form of black and white A1 sized photocopied posters are pasted onto the gallery wall. It is visible that there are two types of posters and that each type has been produced in reverse as well as the correct way around.One poster is for the death of the character J. Moriarty – from the stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – one of the brothers of Holmes’s arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, whilst the other poster is for the character Mycroft Holmes, the brother of Sherlock Holmes. Both characters are mentioned but never visible in any of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The texts on the posters read: Colonel J. Moriarty has expired after a long and difficult struggle grappling with that to which he was the most susceptible. The funeral will take place on the 4th of May at Englische Kirche Meringen, Kirchgasse, Meiringen 3860 and Mycroft Holmes, Gentleman and extraordinary artist has passed away in full serenity, without regrets or unfinished business. The funeral will take place on the 4th of May at Englische Kirche Meringen, Kirchgasse, Meiringen 3860.

Eventually on the 4th of May, the public death announcements are to be pasted to a wall in the Bahnhofplatz in the town of Meiringen, neighbouring Reichenbach Falls, to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Sherlock Holmes and a mass pilgrimage to the town by Sherlock Holmes fans. Reichenbach Falls is the location where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero, Sherlock Holmes, apparently died locked in mortal combat with his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, at the end of the novel The Adventure of the Final Problem.

An "Alchemy Box" disguised as a pebble dashed concrete pillar that one might expect to find in a pedestrianised street or a parking lot. The Alchemy Box contains articles sealed within relating to the theme of civic aesthetics and brutalist architecture, as well as imagined, unrealised, failed or unsustainable ideas for buildings and lifestyles. The ingredients within are listed on the wall as a text near to the pillar.

A cardboard life-sized cut out, similar to one that might be expected to be found in the entrance to a cinema, stands in the corner of the room facing the wall so that only the reverse is visible to the viewer. The image on the front of the cut out is of the back of the fictional artist Santo Sterne; the image however has been spray-painted a sepia colour so that only the silhouette is visible.

A lucky charm pendant one might usually expect to find attached to a Japanese teenager’s mobile telephone. The pendant represents a cartoonified caricature of the fictional artist Aston Ernest, originally modelled by the father of the artist following conversations with his son about the artist’s appearance and demeanour. The model was miniaturised and reproduced with a rapid prototyping process.

A photographic portrait of the artist Mark Leckey.

A reconstructed map of the City of Paris – usually made freely available by the tourist information office – reproduced here to include a number of streets existing before 1911. Most of the streets mark locations where town planners have replaced the cities organic structure with a formulaic interpretation of civic economy. Displayed in a cardboard box near to a door between the zones of the exhibition and other parts of the institution, the map is freely available for the visitor to take.

The work consists of three components: a transparent film placed in the window of the gallery, a photograph of the invigilator of the space and a book of matches in which an ISBN number has been noted. Rain droplets have been printed on a transparent film, which has been placed in the window of the space. In the centre of the film the rain droplets appear to have been wiped by someone’s hand, providing a framed viewable area into the gallery. Behind this wiped area sits the invigilator of the space. A small black and white photograph framed on the wall shows an image of the face of the invigilator gazing out of the window through the rain into the street. On the floor of the gallery is a book of matches, discarded and free for a visitor to pick up, investigate or take. Inside the book of matches the viewer finds a series of numbers written by hand that on first appearance seem to be a telephone number, but on further investigation materialises as ISBN classification of a reference book directing the viewers experience beyond the realms of the gallery, the work continues elsewhere, in the world outside.

A rubdown transfer of standardised printer’s crop and registration marks identify and frame an A4 sized portrait area on the gallery wall. The title of the printer’s file for this empty space is also visible on the wall, it reads: "Walk back two paces and half close your eyes".

Wall-mounted ladder rungs are positioned up high on the gallery wall, out of reach of the spectator, leading to the ceiling of the gallery where a metal porthole, painted the same matt white as the walls, has been inconspicuously installed. The porthole is bolted closed.

A mobile presented with a broken thread, fallen to the floor. The mobile is an assemblage of laser cut pieces taken from four various sources: an Alexander Calder print purchased from the book shop of Pompidou, Paris; impact stars from the cartoon Tintin photographed from the television, used to suggest that Tintin’s canine sidekick Snowy is drunk; pieces cut from a print of a painting by Bruno Munari re-documented on the artist’s studio wall; and pieces that make up the components of Didactease logo devised by Gander as featured in work “There exists only one definition for anything anywhere at anyone time”, 2007.

A single channel video is presented on a monitor placed on the floor of the space. The video shows gallerist Niru Ratnam riding a bicycle in a park wearing a pair of pyjamas. The work is a loose reconstruction on a scene from the film Basquiat, 1996, by Julian Schnabel. The audio element of the video consists of a voiceover of Ratnam reading a press release he had written for the work following the production of the visual element of the video. The press release was written with the full knowledge that it would become the voiceover for the final edit.

An unfolded poster is pinned to the gallery wall representing a show plan for a ‘metaverse’ exhibition by Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002), also known as Spike Milligan, an Anglo-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet and playwright. The plan is written by a forensic graphologist in the handwriting of Spike Milligan as sampled from his diary entries from the year 1972.

The work consists of three components: a transparent film placed in the window of the gallery, a photograph of the invigilator of the space and a book of matches in which an ISBN number has been noted. Rain droplets have been printed on a transparent film, which has been placed in the window of the space. In the centre of the film the rain droplets appear to have been wiped by someone’s hand, providing a framed viewable area into the gallery. Behind this wiped area sits the invigilator of the space. A small black and white photograph framed on the wall shows an image of the face of the invigilator gazing out of the window through the rain into the street. On the floor of the gallery is a book of matches, discarded and free for a visitor to pick up, investigate or take. Inside the book of matches the viewer finds a series of numbers written by hand that on first appearance seem to be a telephone number, but on further investigation materialises as ISBN classification of a reference book directing the viewers experience beyond the realms of the gallery, the work continues elsewhere, in the world outside.

A maquette produced using a rapid prototype method for the proposal of a public sculpture. The public sculpture would be representation of the demolished statue of "the Happy Prince" and swallow as featured in the final part of the children’s story The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Made from a single piece of stone the sculpture would consist of one solid piece representing the rubble of a ruined work of public art, including details of the forms of the prince’s heart, sword and helmet, as well as the dead swallow.

A black plastic wall mounted "Alchemy Box", the contents of which are sealed within, has a horizontal strip like window of tinted glass set into the front. The window is too dark to view through, however a bright blue LED is continuously lit from behind the glass. The ingredients within the box relate to thinking around the themes of duration, the freeze frame, the still life, motion, twining, the repetitious moment and the moving still.

Five seconds after the spectator leaves the space, a plume of smoke is emitted from the floor in the doorway of the gallery, making it seems as though the spectator disappeared into a puff of smoke. Although other visitors to the space have the opportunity to witness this remnant of the spectator’s presence, it is likely that the spectator activating the work never has the chance to observe it.

Five seconds after the spectator leaves the space, a plume of smoke is emitted from the floor in the doorway of the gallery, making it seems as though the spectator disappeared into a puff of smoke. Although other visitors to the space have the opportunity to witness this remnant of the spectator’s presence, it is likely that the spectator activating the work never has the chance to observe it.

Five seconds after the spectator leaves the space, a plume of smoke is emitted from the floor in the doorway of the gallery, making it seems as though the spectator disappeared into a puff of smoke. Although other visitors to the space have the opportunity to witness this remnant of the spectator’s presence, it is likely that the spectator activating the work never has the chance to observe it.

Exhibition views at Kadist Art Foundation

An associative photograph numbered 29 from a series of 31, containing articles from research on the theme of censorship, precedence, mimetics, associative methodologies, authorship, ownership and appropriation. A template of the articles from the previous image in the series has been cut out by laser to reveal the gallery wall behind the photograph. The cut out pieces including the mount board, photograph and glazing are also presented, on the floor in the vicinity of the photograph.

Nine fabricated rings, shown in a pile on the floor close to the wall. Five interconnected rings in various colours represent the rings fallen from a poster for the Mexico 1986 Olympic Games, two rings represent the broken spectacles of the fictional children’s character Harry Potter and two rings represent the two serif character O’s fallen from the computer screen of the Google homepage.

A lucky charm pendant one might usually expect to find attached to a Japanese teenager’s mobile telephone. The pendant represents a cartoonified caricature of the French curator François Piron, originally modelled by the father of the artist following conversations with his son about the curator’s appearance and demeanour. The model was miniaturised and reproduced with a rapid prototyping process.

An antique scrabble board has tiles, which have been replaced with fabricated and aged replica tiles, produced using an alphabet made from the handwriting of the American writer, cartoonist and neologist (an inventor of words) Theodor Seuss Geisel, otherwise known as Dr Suess. The board is presented with its pieces scattered across the floor having been purposefully upturned part way through a game. The title “Accenture? (Tentative Title)”, 2009, refers to a recently invented word meaning ‘accent on the future’, a term used in the advertising world.

A number of black and white XyloPhone keys sit piled on top of one another balanced on the top right corner of an empty white frame. The keys in ascending order from the bottom represent the order of the notes of the Windows XP Start-up theme followed by the Windows XP shut-down theme.

An image of a architectural computer model, produced by Bell, Travers, Willson Architects Ltd, of The New School of Art and Design, 2004, conceived and designed by Ryan Gander. The image is made up by overprinting on existing messages and notices found on a notice board in the Fine Art department of Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris, and then replacing these on a new notice board in the gallery.

A photograph shows a young woman sitting in café. On the table in front of her is a notepad on which are written the words "Rethink idea of self portrait" in a purple ink fountain pen.