After winning the Turner Prize in 2008, Mark Leckey unveils his first UK solo show at the Serpentine Gallery. The exhibition will be presenting three major examples of Leckey’s explorations into the perceptions of progression, change, and memory. We talk to the artist about the ‘casuals’, an anthropomorphic fridge and try to talk about the infamous art prize.
As The Independent rolled its proverbial eyes at the Turner Prize celebrating art that was purely “about wearing your theory-stuffed brain on your sleeve” and The Telegraph slated Leckey’s prize winning piece as “technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty”, Mark Leckey was prepared for the worst. The Turner Prize has become somewhat of a dartboard of late, its victors’ heads becoming the target of wrath in this bittersweet art prize. Leckey stated, shortly after he claimed the award, that he was shocked at how much “obloquy and hatred the prize generates”; it’s almost as if the Turner Prize winner is unanimous for the pinnacle of contemporary art, and thus becomes the focus for the general public’s outspoken discontent therein. However, to those less inclined to dislike art branded ‘modern’, Leckey saw in a seminal development of assemblage art, being one of the first to apply the genre outside of sculpture. His video piece, ‘Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore’ was the vital step in the development of appropriation art for the film medium, and one that will see the artist as hopefully more than another Tuner Prize victim.
Winning the Turner Prize, as it is for most of its’ victors, was not the euphoric, career-affirming, turning point one might assume the experience from the famous art prize, but then Leckey had never expected it to be. All too aware of the insular and totemic nature of celebrating individual artists, Leckey has always been against representing the entire art world by narrowing it down to a few examples. The past few years have seen how he has coped being on the other side of the celebrity wall, and after several exhibitions throughout Europe and the US, Leckey returns to his native soil for his first UK solo show.
This must be very significant to you, having your first UK show. How did this translate in the selection process for your work?
Mark Leckey: Well it was really important, I really wanted a solo exhibition, and I wanted it to be representative of what I do. A lot of people have criticized my work as too intellectual and dry so I wanted to show what I was about. I chose ‘(Fiorucci Made Me) Hardcore’ because it’s what people know me for, and I wanted to show it again. ‘GreenScreen RefridgeratorAction’ was something I had been working on, and something I was thinking about at the time of putting the exhibition together.
So is there an overall theme of the exhibition?
ML: My working title was ‘all my aspirations’. I had three main ideas which turned into three big pieces, and each idea explores these transformations in different areas. ‘(Fiorucci Made Me) Hardcore’ is like a history of British dance culture, from the 70s, 80s, 90s. It focuses on the ‘casuals’; they were this youth cult. It wasn’t a movement, more like a style. It was the working class youth, who adopted that middle class, leisurewear look. I was a ‘casual’, and it’s something that always stayed with me. It wasn’t actually aspirational, we didn’t aspire to be that type of person or anything like that, it’s not about that, but it’s about that idea of transcending. So, the fridge (‘GreenScreen RefrigeratorAction’) is about a fridge that comes to life; a dumb object that wants to be alive.
So that fits in with transcending; personification?
ML: Yeah, but I also wanted to show how our relationship to machines has changed. We do treat machines and these dumb objects as if they are people. We’ve gotten into this cybernetic loop with them; we’ve given them so much power that now they inform us. The last piece is ‘BigBoxStatueAction’, which is three sound systems piled up. They address the Henry Moore piece in the Serpentine, because, to me, Henry Moore has always been a symbol of high-art, so it’s a conversation between the two. It’s not aspirational, as such, more to point out the lost language of high-art. Artists don’t use art in the same as they used to, so my work addresses that.
So it’s more about transformation or evolution than aspirations?
ML: Well ‘transitions’ was the other main idea. I’m making art in the transition between the 20th and the 21st century. There’s so many ideas from the 20th century which used to inspire me but I can’t believe in them anymore, but then there’s nothing in the 21st century yet. We’re waiting; everything is unwritten. I feel like I’m frozen in time, so the people are trapped in the film, and the fridge is literally frozen. Nothing is really alive, but it all seems like it is; it’s all suggested that it’s living but it’s not.
You’re work is quite anthropomorphic in that way.
ML: What do you mean by that?
Well your work, particularly the fridge and the sound system, they remind me of Donald Judd, big forms or masses, imitating something human.
ML: I’m not sure I ever agree with art being anthropomorphic, surely everything could be anthropomorphic then? Everything I end up making is like a surrogate of me. It’s my voice box, my memories, my nostalgia, I suppose it’s human in that way. I think I’m always looking for things that are alive, the more I think about things the more I make things more primitive. I really like that idea of animals that can talk, and machines that can walk, I think I give everything an aspect of my personality.
So, can we talk about the Turner Prize?
I prefer not to.
Well do you think your art has changed since then?
ML: Yeah… for the worse!
Mark Leckey
19 May – 26 June
Serpentine Gallery
www.serpentinegallery.org
5th May – Friday 27th (PV 5th May from 6pm)
Tracklisting
(2009)france-800x600.jpg)
