Elmgreen & Dragset: This is How We Bite Our Tongue
Quirky exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery of work by contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and
Ingar Dragset.
From the first
room, where they had turned the space into a disused swimming pool, I loved
this! The swimming pool was so realistic even down to the earth at the bottom
of pool and peeling paint. The changing room at the side looked perfectly
normal till you looked closely and found there were hinges and handles on both
sides of the door.
I loved the
approach of having no labels on the walls but giving you a good booklet with
the commentaries in which were well written and informative. This made you look
at the work and think about it before reading about it.
Heading upstairs
you found smaller works from the last ten years. If you don’t think you know
Elmgreen and Dragset’s work they did the boy on a rocking horse installation
for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square and these works were similar, being
figurative and symbolic in style. “One Day” was a sculpture of a young boy
gazing at rifle in a display case. I liked the fact you could walk round him
and view the gun from his perspective.
The picture I’ve used is of “Pregnant White Maid”, a figure cast in
bronze and painted white. It’s part of a series of maids. I like that this was
shown with “Invisible”, a small boy hiding in a marble fireplace, it set up a
dialogue between the pieces and a different narrative than when they were made.
Closes on 13
January 2019
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