Paperjam

A trip to the Ikon Gallery

Art // Jim // 30th July 2006

I love eating at Wagamama, the food is great and there is always some kind of humourous order mix-up. Not today though, I am quickly ushered to a table, my food seems to arrive before I’ve ordered it and before I can engage in my favourite pastime of waitress banter, she fixes me with a “I’ve heard it all, don’t fuck with me” look and scribbles on my mat in red pen – clearly I am a marked man.

Anyway the food is great and I have a stroll around a very busy Birmingham before heading towards the Brindley Place area. On the way there is some kind of Hare Krisna parade thing going on, with a big colourful carriage being dragged through town. I have a quick look but can’t spot Boy George amongst the revellers.

Further down the road there is what looks like a younger, guitar’d up, Indian version of the Osmond family playing a gig in the street. I pull my headphones out to listen to what they are doing; it is Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, I am mightily confused.

There is a café at the Ikon gallery, but it is Tapas – a horse I am not ready to get back on just yet, so I am glad of the noodles earlier. I stroll in and ask the friendly girl on reception if I have to pay to have a look round, she assures me it is all free. Jolly good.

Up to the first floor gallery which is housing On Kawara’s Eternal Return. This is basically a series of slightly differently sized canvasses with the date on which they were created painted on them in an identical typeface. They are all Sundays. Doesn’t sound like much to look at, does it? To be honest the room is a bit strange, very cold and sterile, I’m going to have to use the description of "Kubrick-esque" yet again (yes I can hear the yawning as I type).

Eternal Return: Sundays, not my photo

I ask the bored bloke on duty if I can take a picture for a web site, he says it is OK as long as I sign a disclaimer at reception. I dash back down but the guardian of reception can’t find the forms. I attempt to just promise that I won’t infringe anyone’s copyright and put on my most honest face. She’s having none of it and eventually finds the form, which a quick glance at reveals that I can’t put any photos on a web site. Consider doing it anyway and putting someone else’s address down, suffer guilt and decide against it.

The thing with Eternal Return, as with other conceptual art, is that the really interesting part about it is the idea, the production and associated rituals. Aesthetically it ain’t that interesting (at least not to me), but becomes more so when you learn that:
- The incredibly accurate and uniform text is all done by hand.
- Each painting is housed in its own custom made box along with artefacts from the day in question, there is an example in the resource room at the Ikon.
- If the painting is not entirely finished and perfect by the end of the Sunday in question, then it is destroyed. That seems incredibly Japanese, well, to a simpleton gaijin like me. Culture might not enter into it at all.

One plus of the whole thing is that is that it made me aware of On Kawara, who seems to be something of an enigma .

Up the stairs to the Olafur Eliasson and Boris Oicherman exhibit helpfully entitled Your Uncertainty Of Colour Matching Experiment, which kind of does what it says on the tin. The first room houses a continuous line of coloured panels each with a subtle gradient that together graduate around the room into the familiar rainbow of visible colours.

Through here into a dimly lit grey room with what looks like a couple of microscopes linked to laptops. A very nice lady invites me to take part in the colour-matching test, after checking that it definitely won’t hurt, I give it a go. The experiment involves looking into the microscope and twiddling some dials to get two halves of a circle to turn the same shade of blue.

I have a bit of trouble getting it done to be honest, part of it is to do with being shit at the sort of extended wink that you need to do to look into a microscope. I make some really terrible jokes to the very nice lady (indeed) about not being much of a winker and how perhaps I could do with winking more often (I am sure that I can somehow hear, miles away, the likes of Steve and Tom rolling their eyes and groaning with embarrassment). She giggles politely, not a clue what I am on about, but the bloke behind me who has appeared and is waiting to have a go huffs in a very pointed manner.

Eventually I have the circle looking all the same colour blue and I tell the very nice lady. Things look up when I am asked if she could take my personal details but it is just data for the experiment.

Once the test is done the next room has some projectors showing a whole load of the results so far, the varied and frankly inaccurate attempts at matching the colours from visitors to the exhibit seem to indicate either:
-That perception of colour and brightness is a subjective experience based on a number of personal and environmental variables.
-That there are some people with severely fucked up eyesight out there.

Finally in the bijou tower room of the Ikon is e-legend by Christina Kubisch. Some fairly disturbing noises are playing, they are “recordings of electromagnetic sound waves recorded around Birmingham, remixed into an original composition”. It is quite hypnotic; a sudden change from quiet to a bit louder makes me jump quite a lot. You can take a walk round town in some special headphones that pick up such sound waves from the magnetic fields produced by electronics and communications equipment. However you need some fairly hefty id to borrow them and I don’t tend to take my passport with me for a trip out on the train, so I have to give it a miss. Which is a shame.

Links I will destroy if they are not perfect.

The Ikon Gallery

Well worth a visit and the cafe looked good too

Olafur Eliasson web site

Check "The Body As Brain" under exhibitions and projects

Article on On Kawara

From the Guardian, particular info on the date paintings

Christina Kubisch web site

Making strange sounds from all sorts of sources