LYGIA PAPE ATE MY BRAIN

Or rather she might have done, if I was around in the 70s.

Watching one of Pape's film pieces, named Eat Me, I genuinely did feel like my brain was being nibbled at. 5 minutes of grotesque closeups of human mouths, all waggling tongues and puckering lips... It was horrific, but at the same time strangely sexual and... slightly erotic.

Can't believe I just typed that.

MOVING ON...

SERPENTINE GALLERY: LYGIA PAPE - MAGNETISED SPACES

Lygia Pape's work is mainly film pieces, one of which being The Book of Creation (1979); a series of clever, abstract papercraft models being manipulated by the artist. These models all represent major stages in the evolution of man, such as the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, etc. 

Pape also worked with wood and other 3D media; two that I saw in the Serpentine were The Book of Days (a series of brightly coloured, abstract woodcuts, each one unique and representing one day in a year), and Web (an intricate network of wires held taut between the ceiling and floor). Web in particular captured my interest; at first glance it appears to be shafts of light piercing the ceiling of the Serpentine, lancing down into the floor at various haphazard angles. 

 Web by Lygia Pape. Wire, stretched between ceiling and floor

 

Looking at it was almost like observing a giant optical illusion, an enormous graphical drawing brought to life. Walking around it, parts of it seem to shimmer in and out of existence as a result of the clever lighting in the piece's installation space, and how some of the strands layer upon each other depending on the angle it is viewed from... just like a spider's web. What makes it particularly memorable is how I got bollocked for trying to take a cheeky photo of it on my phone. Managed to make the bloke look like a goon however by haughtily claiming that I was "just checking my facebook" and storming out of the gallery. I'll never learn.

BRITISH MUSEUM: GRAYSON PERRY and THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN CRAFTSMAN

It's gotta be said, that sort of sounds like a pretty terrible idea for a film.  Grayson Perry is... well. For want of a better word, a genius. Or a madman. 

 Grayson Perry with his motorbike, AM1, designed to transport his teddy bear and god of his imaginary world, Alan Measles.
 

Basically, Perry's work revolves around popular culture and an imaginary world he created as a child, presided over by his favourite teddy bear, Alan Measles, who takes the role of god, benign dictator, unbeaten racing driver, ace fighter pilot, liberator of Germany.... the list goes on.

Perry's fictional world portrays the British Museum as some kind of temple, a place of worship for the people who crafted the various exhibits in the collection, but whose identities have been lost to the ravages of time.
 

Pilgrimage to the British Museum, Grayson Perry. Graphite pencil, paper. Cover of the catalogue for The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman.

He also presents some of his original work, in the form of a mashup between the banalaties of the 21st century, and the fine art ceramics and tapestries that have been prolific at different points in our history. One such work, The Frivolities of Now, is a large, Greek-style pot glazed a lurid neon yellow, with buzzwords of today's internet culture scribbled all across it in blue; if there was ever a piece that invoked today's zeitgeist, then this is it.

I quite liked Perry's work, though the exhbition appeared to have been padded out with seemingly unrelated artifacts from the Museum's collection... not sure what was going on there. Also, entertaining as Perry is as an artist, I'm not sure it was worth £8 for a ticket and a 2 hour wait.

And so ends the Gallery week. Well London, it's been emotional. But quite frankly, I'm sick of the tube, and if I never ride the Underground again, I will not die feeling unfulfilled.

- Padfoot