THE EASIEST JOURNEY EVER

After yesterday's debacle in London Bridge, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Whitechapel Gallery was insanely easy to find. All I had to do was walk to Euston Square, jump on the Hammersmith & City tube line to Aldgate East and Whitechapel was literally out the doors and 10 paces to the left. My joy knew no bounds, and I may or may not have broken out into a spasmodic bout of interpretive dance in celebration. 

Anyway...

WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY - ROTHKO IN BRITAIN AND ZARINA BHIMJI: visited 20/01/12

When I finally found the Rothko section I was a little bit disappointed - it was literally a small back room, with only one of his famous Red paintings on the wall. I'm not exactly a die-hard fan of his work, but I think his contribution to the evolution of modern art and painting warranted more than this. On the other hand, some of the notes from the artist himself that were on display were quite interesting to look at, particularly a typewritten letter from Rothko to the curator of an exhibition, exhaustively detailing how his paintings were meant to be hung and lit in a gallery space to gain maximum impact.

One of the larger shows running at Whitechapel is a retrospective of photographer and film maker Zarina Bhimji. Personally, I really enjoyed Bhimji's work; the titles were all a little wordy and in some cases unnecessarily poetic, but the work itself was incredibly powerful. Similar in theme to Anselm Kiefer's work, Bhimji's photography deals with a kind of decay; images of ageing buildings and piles of old paper records bound with rope invoke feelings of grief and loss, relics left behind from a bygone era. Her film piece on display on the ground floor, Yellow Patch, is similar in content; this 29 minute long work consists of slow, almost painful shots and closeups of the architecture and decaying furniture of what appears to be an abandoned records office, and what used to be a kind of stately home, now left to ruin. Layered over the top of this imagery is a soundtrack of the everyday noises that would have been heard in these buildings; idle chatter, footsteps, the clicking of a typewriter, all heavily dubbed over a kind of soft, ethereal, dreamlike music, oozing into the auditorium space via some chunky-ass speakers in 5.1 surround sound. This work really felt like what a recording of these buildings might sound like if they could talk, the noises and memories seeping from the walls and blending into a deafening cacophony. One of the most intense moments was a scene showing just a crack in the wall of an old house; the camera slowly zooms in, until the crack becomes a canyon, a chasm, a gaping abyss, filling the screen - and all the while, a deep, bass rumbling sound builds. Truly this felt like the sound of the earth subsiding, the sound of the wall groaning in pain as weight shifted and bonds of bricks and mortar split in two, causing the gaping wound in its surface.

Seriously worth seeing if you have an interest in film or photography. Even if you don't.... Go see it. Now.

- Padfoot