Eric Bainbridge: Forward Thinking 1976-2008
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
WHEN asked the million-dollar question: “What is art for?” Eric Bainbridge relied, perhaps somewhat portentously: “To examine the human condition”. To what extent he does this in this bringing together of his sculptures and what are called “works on paper”, made over a 30-year period, remains ambiguous.
The title of the exhibition – Forward Thinking – is resolutely about the future rather than the past and it is typical of Bainbridge’s anarchistically-inclined approach that he is determined not to be caught in any kind of retrogressive tendency.
With influences drawn from Arte Povera and Pop Art, Bainbridge eschews the conventional materials of the sculptor in favour of the discarded and common materials of everyday to create objects in which any identifiable theoretical basis is rejected in favour of a complete openness towards materials and processes.
From Pop Art, he draws on the notion of kitsch and the sort of familiar objects that may be useless, but which are imbued with sentiment and nostalgia.
Following the birth of one of his children, he produced The Hole Through Which All Things Must Pass, consisting of a Madonna-like figure covered in purple furry acrylic to which round balls are attached, reminiscent of spores, to suggest fertility and fecundity. The figure stands on a square flattened form with a hole in the centre, which can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. This is covered in a lurid yellow furry fabric. As a meditation on the power of Madonna, on motherhood and on sex, the piece is both confrontational and seductive.
More conventional is an unfired clay head, stood upside down on the floor on which is painted a small square depicting an idyllic landscape. The birthday card-like romantic image serves as a window into the brain, revealing a longing for tranquillity and escape that owes little to the realities of life – a great contrast to the roughly-modelled features.
One of Bainbridge’s best-known works is Dark Style Swan, a 10-foot high model of a swan with a screw or tap on its back, again covered in fake fur. The bird, beloved by many for its sensuous, seductive beauty and grace, together with its balletic movements, is an emblem par excellence of kitsch, yet the creature can be both vicious and aggressive if threatened. More recently, the artist has worked with materials such as melamine, a type of chipwood manufactured from recycled stock, which is a further indication of Bainbridge’s concern with both environmental issues and with tawdry, cheap-looking materials.
One piece, which looks like a shoddy item of furniture, consists of a solid-looking box, some five feet high, which is made up from small pieces of chipboard laminated with artificial veneers. Intriguing screws and pegs on the outside suggest possible entry to the inside, but the box is completely enclosed, its secrets safe from prying eyes.
Playfully subversive, Bainbridge’s early sculptures are brash, colourful and paradoxical – the familiar distorted and disguised under a thin covering of fake fur.
His later work is more abstract in addressing issues around the environment, consumer waste and workaday banality. The materials he uses may be recovered from skips, found discarded on streets or even bought from pound shops, but his themes are relevant and tough, with the pieces themselves often taking on a classical beauty. The resulting work is agreeably disconcerting.
Emmanuel Cooper
Eric Bainbridge: Forward Thinking 1976-2008 (with an excellent catalogue) continues until November 16
