Smoke these and cough out fur balls...
Tenderpixel Gallery is a lilliputian ‘gallery’ tucked away on Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross Road. It’s almost like stepping into someone’s empty front room. Except this is a Private View, and the place is jammed full of people talking ‘art’ and sipping free wine. As we wriggle between their legs to find said art, we almost tread on it…
'Still Burning', Sally Spinks’ work in reaction to the London smoking ban and that which adorns the promotional literature for Are You Sitting Comfortably?, consists of what, at first glance, looks like hundreds of little discarded cigarette butts. Looking a little closer of course, we quickly realise that each one has been painstakingly hand-knitted. But why? Why would you do that? Here’s what the press release had to say:
“Cigarettes, items that are normally discarded and dirty…[become] objects that are adorable, even collectible. It is here that desire becomes expressed as comfort; an addictive deadly vice is reduced to a cuddly consequence.”
Spinks has taken something normally regarded as a nuisance or eyesore; dirty, smelly and undesirable, and made it into something soft and comforting; like a cuddly toy. You want to pick the cigarettes up and feel them; take them home with you. According to Spinks, the desire to feel comfortable is human, but the achievement of comfort has an effect on how we perform.
This cuddly piece of art thus carries a deeper meaning - and a subtle warning. To bring that warning into focus, Spinks quotes an unlikely source. American Business Writer Larry Bitner, who said “the desire to feel comfortable is human. The achievement of comfort in what we do and how we perform has a down side. It can reduce our motivation levels and make us less focused, with disastrous results”.
The theme continues in 'Protect Us From What We Want', where Spinks’ acrylic and hand -linked chain mail mats serve as ‘signifiers of control’. They look a bit like no-smoking signs, which establishments are now legally bound to display of course. For Spinks, control is something that now trespasses into most areas of our lives and, like many of us, she wonders what price we pay for our nanny state and how much of our own personal freedom we lose in the process of trying to protect ourselves.
The exhibition culminates in the piece 'Fine Line', a work where “gigantic human size cigarettes invade the gallery space acting as shamans, warning of what occurs when one remains permanently fixed in their comfort zone”. This piece slightly muddled the message for us; the fact that the cigarettes were still fluffy (made this time from rolls of carpet) but now larger than life did not seem to work in the same way as the cute knitted cigarettes which could be mistaken for real ones. Still, a very interesting exhibition and well worth a look. If only they were giving those little cigarettes away – I quite want some in my front room!
There's still time to check this Sally Sprinks' Are You Sitting Comfortably? out at the Tenderpixel Gallery until Monday 18th May, 2009.
Words: Isaac Howlett