Ventriloquist @ Timothy Taylor

A Mayfair PV was always going to be a bit different from a Hackney/Hoxton student one but I didn't expect that I would not be able to see any art properly.



http://www.artrabbit.com/all/events/event/10596/ventriloquist

Going primarily to see Steve's work, I hadn't even noticed the other names on the poster. The idea of the show, as far as I could gather, was that established international 'art stars' are displayed alongside and mingled with new emerging artists. The title, Ventriloquist, derives from the Jasper Johns piece from the early eighties, and the idea that an artist speaks through the voice of something that appears to be elsewhere.

I don't know whether it was because the gallery was so busy and packed that I couldn't see the work as a whole properly, or whether I was distracted by all the absurdly pretentious twonks*, but I really didn't feel the show had a strong enough connection between all the work. It felt like the new work was overshadowed by the familiar pieces. Seeing a Duchamp next to person x from the RCA was a good idea on paper but it seemed that noone was looking at person x's work, just the Duchamp. Did the curator think that the new work wouldn't be able to stand up by itself? I think it would have done.

As I said at the beginning, I went to see Steve's work of which I knew already. It worked well within the gallery space and was one of the newer works that people seemed to be discussing with genuine interest.

Steve Bishop will be at Kingston University doing one of the Wednesday lectures in March, which should be a really good one.

(*I'm not naive enough to think this wouldn't happen but the volume of twattery was truely astounding. Having come straight from the design studio and dressed in the usual slop and slightly smelling of Hackney sweat, it was a bit of a 'don't really belong here' moment.)