So what if Tessa Norton's crush on James Richards' artwork is just skin-deep, maybe that's part of the appeal.
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| Still from Radio at Night |
In the 1995 TV series My So-Called Life, Angela Chase (Claire Danes) spends 19 episodes fixating on Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto). What depths could be concealed under his curtains and sheepskin coat? It soon emerges that she is projecting multitudes onto his studied blankness. He’s handsome but kind of boring. Her neighbour Brian Krakow, meanwhile, couldn’t hope to conceal his affection for Angela, and consequently could never hope to achieve Jordan’s mystery and allure.
There are two
good life lessons right there. Firstly, we’ve probably all worked out by now to
watch out for things that seem deep but really just look good. Secondly, though
– we’re all Brian Krakow, but what if we weren’t? Maybe it would be nice
sometimes to just be a bit restrained; stay aloof, stay handsome, see what
happens.
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| Crumb Mahogany Photo: Mark Blower |
At the ICA, James
Richards’ ground floor is as aloof as the upper galleries are handsome.
Downstairs, the sound installation Crumb Mahogany hardly welcomes visitors in.
Walled in, a multilayered web of industrial and ephemeral sounds (typewriters,
revving engines, murmurs) weave together to create a forbidding, invisible
border. People tentatively tiptoe into the space, as though seeking permission
from the sound to move closer.
Upstairs, the
film/soundtrack Radio at Night occupies one room while a slide piece Rushes
Minotaur sits in the neighbouring gallery. In a direct contrast to downstairs,
these two works are seductive, siren songs drawing you closer. Closeups of
surgery, holes, hair and skin further suggest at a porosity and
interconnectedness of things; fittingly, it turns out, as the two rooms of
visuals and the soundtrack work together to create an unsettling and utterly
immersive experience.
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| Still from Rushes Minotaur |
The found
footage, mostly in either black and white or a muted, faded colour palette, assumes
a curiously timeless quality. The recurring close ups of an eye are almost old fashioned in
their directness and simplicity (eyes are inevitably 1920s anyway, evoking Vertov’s Kino-eye and
Bunuel) and situate the work firmly in the pantheon of twentieth century film
and visual culture, as though the image you’re looking at could almost be a
hundred years old.
Other parts of 20th Century Europe recur, from Superstudio-esque grid patterns to party-goers at a masquerade masked ball, perhaps at the cusp of the 1980s, creating a languid sense of time being washed away. Elsewhere, images of pig carcasses in abbatoirs, hair follicles and disorienting glimpses from a windscreen stir up a sense of vague menace and disquiet. Richards’ cut is resolutely authorial and virtuoso throughout, with masterful cutting and repetition making all the work seem entirely as one.
Other parts of 20th Century Europe recur, from Superstudio-esque grid patterns to party-goers at a masquerade masked ball, perhaps at the cusp of the 1980s, creating a languid sense of time being washed away. Elsewhere, images of pig carcasses in abbatoirs, hair follicles and disorienting glimpses from a windscreen stir up a sense of vague menace and disquiet. Richards’ cut is resolutely authorial and virtuoso throughout, with masterful cutting and repetition making all the work seem entirely as one.
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| Still from Radio at Night |
Like the imagery,
the astonishing soundtrack assembles a variety of sources and found sounds
(breathy erotica, birdsong, a click-clack, unidentified machinery) to weave
together into something stirring, Morriccone-ish and utterly seamless. The
overall effect remains necromantic – a little haunted, a little grisly, a giallo
film for the death of cinema. If at times the three works are too cool to truly
reveal their hand, it scarcely matters. When you look this terrific, people
will forgive you.
Tessa Norton
James Richards
21 September - 13 November, 2016
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