Jennifer Lovemore-Reed at Bell-Roberts
By Kim Gurney
Dealing with identity, place, history, culture and gender in one artwork might seem impossibly ambitious. Yet Jennifer Lovemore-Reed explored all these notions through one very simple idea in her latest work, which was part performance, part video. Unfortunately, it was only on show for a week.
Lovemore-Reed lay motionless in five locations in Cape Town and five counterpart locations in Paris. She filmed herself and the reactions of those around her and called the resulting artwork 45 Minutes as Object.
Thus we see Lovemore-Reed prostrate in various places - Muizenberg beach, a Khayelitsha market, a Cape Town taxi rank, Robben Island and Table Mountain as backdrop - relayed simultaneously on five monitors. On five screens directly opposite, we find her with the River Seine lapping at her clothes, at a Parisian market, on the Metro underground, alongside the Bastille, and near the Eiffel Tower. Each scenario is played out on a continuous 45-minute loop. Lovemore-Reed becomes the artwork along with the reactions of those around her. Our responses complete the meaning.
The filmed reactions are quite revealing: Parisian society appears generally more polite while Capetonians seem more interactive. It might also be that Europeans are more used to art interventions of this sort and take it in their sophisticated stride.
The artwork as a whole invites comparisons and contrasts between the two cities and what they represent. Lovemore-Reed extends this into a theme of 'Africa versus Europe' in a photographic sculpture alongside called Straddle.
45 Minutes as Object (also the show�s title) illustrates how important context is in terms of influencing responses. On a beach, perhaps a more appropriate place for a person to be lying motionless, passersby are not too worried. At a bustling market, Lovemore-Reed is more out of place. Here, concern is more easily elicited, although paradoxically her motionless body is also easier to ignore in this anonymous setting.
45 Minutes asks uncomfortable questions of passers-by: to what are we prepared to turn a blind eye? Conversely, the persistence of some strangers concerned by Lovemore-Reed's state is quite touching. Being prodded and shaken, implored and poked, must have been quite disconcerting for the artist.
Lovemore-Reed says she did feel vulnerable but not in any real danger. She set no limits beforehand about where to draw the line regarding public intervention, but her camera operators were requested to point out the contrived nature of the exercise should anybody become particularly concerned about her welfare. The filming was not obscured. It was indeed evident how passersby shifted their responses once they became aware of the camera. Interaction with the artist generally stopped quite abruptly. The Cape Town taxi rank was one exception.
The presentation of the monitors in the gallery was cleverly thought out. Two aisles of screens faced each other on the floor, which forced the viewer to look down in a mimic of the actual scenario. Only Paris or Cape Town could be watched at any one time, not both, and the viewer was forced outside the scenes, as a voyeur looking in.
Time and space were effectively conflated in the gallery, underscored by this presentation. The scenes ran concurrently, with the sound from each set merging into the next in a conglomeration of noise. Each video loop also ended at exactly the same time: when the artist got up from her prostrate position and walked away.
The idea for 45 Minutes occurred to Lovemore-Reed while undertaking a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The artist says she likes to challenge herself with new projects and this was a first in video media. It is a promising debut.
Opened: March 8
Closed: March 14
Bell-Roberts Gallery, 89 Bree Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 422 1100
Fax: (021) 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
www.bell-roberts.com
