Being Human - An Exhibition

Categories: heritage-and-art

Date: 07 March 2009 12:13:23

Popped up to the Cathedral this morning to look at the Jane Alexander Exhibtion "on Being Human".  It's an exhibition / installation which is part of a wider investigation of the theme, which is unpacked on this uni website page.

It is telling that the essay produced by the Dean of the Cathedral to accompany the exhibition starts with the following paragraph, "Jane Alexander's work is by many turns puzzling, intriguing, challenging and disturbing. A few, while recognising the artist's skill, may even find it repellent, or experience dissonance between these images and their setting within the sacred space of a Christian place of prayer".

The exhibition is on one hand a bit high brow, being a piece to think about rather than enjoy. It's proper arty and a bit wierd - really didn't get why there were a collection of red rubber gloves on the floor. Yet on the other hand it has a a very in your face edge to it, particularly the sculptures which are depicting victims of torture.

The setting of the cathedral is a bit unsettling in some ways, particularly when one figure could be seen as representing sado-masochistic practices, (although an alternative interpretation for the same figure could be somebody who has been forceably silenced via censorship). I think whilst it's the sort of exhibition I'm never going to really get. I prefer the in your face social realism of Emin or Banksy. It would have been better in the Tate modern because The Galilee Chapel has within it an alter and other items which mean the exhibition was not in it's own space. I think it is one of those pieces which requires the setting of a modern gallery with an overly shiney white background and a large space of its own to be set within.

Anyway as I say not my cup of tea but if you are out and about in Durham this month it runs up until the 22nd and is worth a visit just to see what you make of it.