Artistic interventions have become commonplace in recent art history: Koons at Versailles;
Murakami in Venice; Shonibare at the National
Gallery. Artists and artworks have sought to
disrupt, interject and subvert – literally to ‘come
between’ (inter-venire) – the viewing
experience and a system, place, or experience. In an intervention, there exists a sense of
halting the courseof something, of diverting its progress or message, what art historian Khadija
Carroll La has termed ‘phenomenological activism’. The artist or artwork performs the role of
mediating agent and the resulting disruption is significant for the viewer as well as for the
artist/artwork(s). The intervention is therefore of mutual benefit since it encourages a change in
the analysis of both the intervening work, and the situation or setting into which it is placed.
experience and a system, place, or experience. In an intervention, there exists a sense of
halting the courseof something, of diverting its progress or message, what art historian Khadija
Carroll La has termed ‘phenomenological activism’. The artist or artwork performs the role of
mediating agent and the resulting disruption is significant for the viewer as well as for the
artist/artwork(s). The intervention is therefore of mutual benefit since it encourages a change in
the analysis of both the intervening work, and the situation or setting into which it is placed.
This is not what the artists in Auto Couture are
doing; they go further. The works here
constitute an implantation, a grafting: while
interventions merely intrude or interject, this
show is really an invasion resulting in a mutation. They
and their pieces have infiltrated
Automotive Couture, occupying channels,
embellishing surfaces and utilizing screens,
making visible the hidden, and putting into use that
which has been sidelined or reduced
to ornament. This is not a coming-between, rather, it is
a coming-together, a seemingly
harmonious cultural enterprise.
The interior of Automotive Couture has not been much
changed visibly, at least, not at
first glance. The Bentley still sleekly holds pride of place,
the desk and chairs are ready for
business, and the tyres – imposing, columnar – are
scattered about, while their shiny
gimcrack counterparts, the alloy wheels, are
piled haphazardly like medieval roundels.
Although there is undoubtedly artistry here, there does not appear to be
much art going on.
But look again; or rather, listen. From inside the car
one can discern, variously, the
shuddering urban bass of speed garage[1], the tinny bonhomie
of a pop tune and the
unmistakable – though unidentifiable – sound of ‘art’
music, that confusing brouhaha
of cacophonous beats that fall into the category of ‘I
know it when I hear it’. An exclusive
mixtape compiled by Gery Georgieva plays on loop: tracks
by Patchfinder, Clemence de
la Tour du Pin, C. Burman, Michael O’Mahoney, Brood Ma,
Enchante and Vera Modena,
and DJ City. Two at a time (this is no family vehicle),
visitors may get into the car and listen.
The incongruity is apparent almost at once: gone is the
ambience of the car showroom
and the traffic of Finchley Road as one is cocooned in
all that leather and metal, carbon
fibre chassis and ceramic brake discs: all that money.
And yet, no engine, no V8 growl
(although Patchfinder’s track relays engine noises from
sports cars just like this one),
and no speed: no movement at all. Time stops in a still
car the same way the first step
on a stationary escalator always disarms: we wait for
something to happen, and yet
nothing does, nothing will. The music is the marker of time
passing.
People mill about the space. There is free champagne.
Many know each other, as is the
nature of such events. The car comes to represent an
almost sacred escape, not one of
speed and flight, but instead a place of private
encounter, both with the music, and with
another person. In the car, the public and private space
fuse, distance and proximity coexist.
Two pairs of eyes look out, or look at the dashboard,
admiring the many buttons and the
dials, and while they do, many more look in. While the
car is a potential portal of escape –
even within this small space – it is also a magnet for
attention, and its occupants
(passengers hardly seems appropriate terminology) become
unwilling exhibitionists.
This is the feeling of the paparazzi-hounded celebrity,
the gazed-at sensation of the
dogger. The tension between the aural and the visual is darkly
explored here: by consenting
to listen to something, to protect oneself
within the car, one is in fact visibly exposed.
CDs containing the music played in the car that are
emblazoned with a print-pattern motif
created by Susanna Davies-Crook and Mikey Gilles, are
available to take away for free,
and it is at this point that you realize there is more
going on here. The artworks here aren’t
part of a different system to that of the shop; they are
one and the same thing, blood flowing
in the same veins. The first night isn’t an opening; it’s
a marketing event.
It is in this spirit that Davies-Crook and Gilles have
made their contribution to Auto Couture.
From 6pm on the first night of the show, until 9pm, a
young woman will be present in the
shop, wearing a swimming costume that bears a print that
Crook-Davies and Gilles have
produced. The pattern exudes a sleekness, a
sensation of concept-car chic: an element
of radiator grille is crisscrossed with smooth,
aerodynamically crafted forms; and a hint of
carbon fibre meshing gives the whole thing a wet look,
linking the body of the model visually
with the ‘body’ of the car.
The presence of the model both lives up to and confounds
expectations. It is ambiguous
whether she is there because of the artists, or as a
customary part of car gatherings – just
another trophy object, like the cars, the pimped[2]-out rims
and the signed football shirts on
the walls. The woman’s presence also highlights the
overtly sexual aspect of cars and of
the car world, and the link is brought into question: the
routinely accepted incongruity of
scantily clad women parading around luxury cars is, in
this context, accentuated and
looked at anew. The line between performance and labour is also
examined and broken down:
she is working within the system both of the car world
and the art opening and it is noteworthy
that the model is not a friend of the artists, nor an
artist in her own right, but was in fact
employed by them. The same currents of masculine
mass-cultural charisma that exist at
race-car rallies and victory-podium celebrations are
tapped into here and the visual language
of art, marketing and commerce become indistinguishable.
To the side of the car, like the fin of a fish, a white
screen juts out from the black walls.
The monitor, which ordinarily runs a looping slideshow of
sports cars taken from racy
angles interspersed with all manner of special fade-in
and fade-out effects, display
holiday snapshots. The images, selected by Stefania
Batoeva from a family album of a
trip to Greece, are piecemeal and haphazard. Some are
cropped so that no obvious
scene is discernable; some show landscapes blurry to the
point of abstraction; others
display people in part: arms, heads, a shoulder blade –
never a cohesive whole.
That most of the photographs are scratched tells us they
are old, but so too does a
woman’s hairstyle and a child’s tee shirt. The pictures
were taken on a road trip that the
artist took with her parents in the early 90s. Although the
journey was a work trip (for the parents)
and the photographs were taken during a brief period
spent on a beach at the end of a long
day of driving, Batoeva recalls only these moments. While
the pictures give at once a fitting
and eloquent portrayal of the fragmentary nature of
memory, they are also demonstrative of
how memory can be shaped by car travel. The impression
given by the photographs Batoeva
has selected give a sense of something fleetingly
glimpsed. The strange cropping and
isolated objects – an ornate stucco fountain against a
blue sky, a rocky promontory seen
from some distance – suggest the constraints of car
windows.
The automobile is therefore both a conduit for the
creation of memory, and a means by
which it is distorted. The photographs are representative
only of moments between driving,
moments of arrival rather than the act of
travel. The happiness evoked in these brief moments
(if we assume the average shutter speed of an exposure to
be 1/125th then these eight
images show us little more than 1/15th of a second in
time) is all that is remembered.
Automobiles and memory are indelibly linked in the
history of the twentieth century.
They are vessels of sexual encounter and horrible injury,
of stunning vistas and
unparalleled freedom. More than anything, however, the
acquisition of a luxury car is
also the acquisition of memories, of moments to look back
on in the car, with the car,
because of the car. Automotive Couture isn’t
just in the car business. It’s in the business
of selling you future memories.
Though the showroom appears to be a place of aesthetic
admiration, of lèche-vitrine
gawping at these fantasy machines, it is of course
primarily a site of commerce. On a
Mac computer almost as sleek as the car that foregrounds
it, Josephine Callaghan
shows a single-channel video work. Against a blue
background (reminiscent of the blue
screens – precursors to green screens – used to film
Michael Powell’s 1940 The Thief of
Baghdad), a fountain gurgles and
trickles on a loop. It is a calm sight – ancient even –
evocative of the Moorish fountains at the Alhambra. The
camera’s gaze, like ours,
becomes meditative and amid the hubbub of the showroom,
the trappings of wealth,
luxury and innovation – of progression – the film, Can’t
Mirror Me Back, is a point of
stillness.
Of all the works in Auto Couture, the film is most
easily identifiable as ‘art’, and yet,
presented as part of the office – an ornamental component
of this commercial environment –
the work operates on another level, too. It functions
seamlessly as a cultural touchstone;
the fountain instantly puts one in mind of Duchamp, but
it also exists within an aesthetic
of mail-order desktop trinkets and screensavers. The work
subtly suggests that what we
find culturally appealing – the fluctuating meaning of
luxury – has changed dramatically.
Any notion of a nobility of culture has been dissipated –
or has at least been denigrated –
and usurped by mainstream cultural hegemony.
Of the other pieces in the show, the film is linked most
closely with the bikini-clad model,
both probing the visual connection between wetness, or
the look of wetness, and notions
of opulence. The work provided by Yves Scherer, however,
seems intent on exposing the
structures, both real and virtual, that uphold the
event. In placing objects – a photocopied
poster stuck to the glass frontage that invites guests to
an ‘After Party’, and, outside, in
stark contrast with the champagne being served inside, a
dustbin filled with beers – that jar
slightly with the makeshift splendor of the interior, he
is making concrete the unseen
networks which are the precursors of this show. By
alluding to events elsewhere and to a
world outside the shop (the dustbin that is used to tidy
away and is itself tidied away, now
displayed) the works ask us to question our
presence here; our physical attendance at an
event we not only found out about virtually, but will
soon be able to re-live – through
Instagram posts and Facebook feeds. These rhizomatic networks,
which have come to
pervade our lives and now dictate and abet our cultural
consumption, now overlap with
perceived reality to such an extent that the ‘space’ in
which things like this event happen
hardly seem to matter.
But still, luxury obtains – regardless of the materiality
of the work – by dint of association
with a wider art world, but also with the car in the
room. The pieces made for the show exist
because of Automotive Couture,
not in spite of or around it. And they thrive. It is by subtle,
almost indiscernible gestures, by mimicking the marketing
strategies and adopting their
visual code, that these pieces operate within the system
of the shop, offering up not critique,
but heightened observation.
[1] Although this music would appear to possess significantly vehicular nomenclature, garage music was in fact named for the
Paradise Garage nightclub in lower Manhattan, and bears little relation to car culture.
[2] NB terminological overlap.
Orlando Whitfield, London, 2013.