Everything at Once
The Store, London WC2, until December 10 Last chance
For many years contemporary art has been moving away from the traditional gallery space and, like some great Leviathan rising from the deep, set about invading a wider world. Take the Venice Biennale, for instance, where churches, palaces, libraries and old industrial buildings like the Arsenale have become showcases for the new. We are catching up.
Since 2001 London has The Vinyl Factory, an astonishing enterprise encompassing a record label, a vinyl pressing plant, a record shop, a music magazine and, in addition to all that, an impressive record of visual art commissions. Its latest venture is a collaboration with the Lisson Gallery, which is celebrating 50 years in the modern art business.
Inspired by John Cage’s 1966 pronouncement, “Nowadays everything happens at once and our souls are conveniently electronic (omniattentive)”, the exhibition mirrors our “all-at-once age”. As the very useful (and free) visitor information guide tells us, contemporary art – the best of it at least – exists as “multi-sensory visions of an accelerated world”. Accordingly the 45 works displayed over three floors in Store Studios, a vast brutalist building on the Strand, cover performance, installations, film and sound, as well as painting and sculpture.
Let no one deny it has been a terrific 50 years. The quality may be uneven but the strongest works will not only hold your attention but also stay in the mind long afterwards. So don’t miss the following: Ai Weiwei’s Odyssey (2016), a 200ft strip of wallpaper which, like the Bayeux Tapestry, tells a story of war, only here the story becomes an elegy on the refugee crisis, inspired by ancient as well as modern narratives of displaced people.
Rodney Graham’s Vexation Island, a nine-minute film about – well, I’m not sure what it’s about – but because it is at once witty, sombre and beautiful it deserves attention. And there is absolutely no doubt about the meaning of Mississippi-born Arthur Jafa’s seven-minute film, The Love is the Message, The Message is Death. Shown in a tent inspired by the revival tents of the American South, where Christian worshippers gathered to hear a preacher speak or to attend healing missions, it is a film fuelled by ferocious anger but also by pride at the way black Americans have withstood a history of brutal racism. As Jafa says: “I think the way we respond is superhuman.” Amen to that.
Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s film, Al Araba Al Madfuna III, explores the interaction between religion, history and myth, while Ryan Gander’s luminous sculpture depicting a stairway to heaven will confound anyone who dares say contemporary art has no spiritual content.
Sarah Whitfield is an independent writer and art historian and sits on various authentication committees, including those of René Magritte and Francis Bacon
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