Walking in my Mind: Adventure into the Artist’s Imagination
Hayward Gallery, London
Perhaps it is never a good idea to invite anyone to “walk in my mind”, even if this were possible. The ramble may be disappointingly mundane, depressingly banal, scary or a combination of all three. While Sigmund Freud attempted to explore the deeper recesses of the subconscious, it was intended to be a revelation for the subject rather than a display for public consumption. And so while the idea of Walking in my Mind seems to explore hitherto unknown territory, it might also seem shallow, too personal and enclosed.
In the event, Walking in my Mind rarely convinces that we are being invited into unexplored territory though three of the ten artists create alarming, atmospheric, and slightly unnerving environments in which we can experience a sense of being in someone else’s head. All three require visitors to enter complete installations, to wander and ponder.
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota brings together art and craft in After the Dream, a dense web of black woollen threads stretching from floor to ceiling to all four floors. Lurking in the centre, like some gigantic spider, hang long dresses, remnants, perhaps, of some forgotten dream. With its low level lighting, After the Dream is part nightmare, part fairy story and part snare.
More hallucinogenic is Extremities (smooth, smooth) by Pipilotti Ris. Viewers sit on a circular seat in the centre of the room while, like a demented mirror ball, images of body parts – a gigantic foot, hand, breast, mouth, ear and penis – flash on and circle the walls, floor and ceilings, moving forward and disappearing. Attacking and receding, we are continually mesmerised and bewitched by memories, desires and fears in a spellbinding combination of the spectacular and the ordinary. Ris has talked about her “internal landscape”, some of which communicates itself to the viewer.
Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman is altogether more claustrophobic. His sprawling labyrinth of caves is constructed from cardboard boxes held in place by yards of brown tape – the sort used to wrap up parcels. The Heath Robinson effect is particularly evident in the uneven and slightly wobbly floor, the empty discarded drink cans and the odd stray cardboard “rock”. The impression is of a temporary structure occupied by a hermit anxious to put the world to rights. Wander on like Alice and you come across books on philosophical subjects, wired-up, foil-covered sticks of fake dynamite, shop dummies and, pasted up on the walls, sheets of articles about social justice. It is the sort of detritus that can pops into mind when it is least expected or wanted, but evokes a search for a better and saner way of life.
Of the other artists Yayoi Kusama – herself a patient in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo – has created a room with vast doll-like objects painted in red polka dot pattern. Standing in her space, the walls of which are mirrored, suggests infinity in which viewers are continually seeing themselves. It is a disconcerting experience.
Equally disorientating, although in a different way, is Jason Rhoades’s The Creation Myth. The vast gallery is filled with what might appear to be discarded rubbish that includes pornographic images stuck on wooden poles, computer screens, chairs, piled up trestle tables, “a forest of deconstructed reality’” For some, it may reflect the confusion of their heads, their lives, their rooms, but, like a cul-de-sac, it never quite leads anywhere.
Emmanuel Cooper
Walking in my Mind continues until September 6
