I was surprised when I red on the Guardian Week End an article by Oliver Burkeman, claiming that nowadays we should need “a revival of the artistic genre known as memento mori ” which was, in short, the continuous presence of a skull and a still life to remind us that our time on Earth is precious because we all shall return to ashes, one day or another.
In fact, contemporary art seems to be all about it
now, everyone can confirm: from Damien Hirst’s skulls to Rachel Whiteread
casts’ of time’s traces, from Polly Morgan’s taxidermy sculptures to Andy
Warhol’s own pop skull to culminate in Chinese artist Zahng Huan wearing a meat
suit. There is a continuous referral to the inevitability of death and decay by
a long list of other living artists.
I won’t be saying that the subject is starting to
bore a bit, especially in the hands of a talented young artist as Amelia
Whitelaw. A graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design, Whitelaw is
certainly bringing Process Art back to its old glory, with a sprinkle of the
old beloved vanitas we seem to always
be so much in need of. In Whitelaw’s sculptures, art is not a finite product to
sell like too many around at this time, but a creative process, a displayed
page on which several different paragraphs can be written.
This is about the first time I saw Amelia Whitelaw’s
performance: The Courtauld Institute of Art, February this year, a group show
called, incidentally, Time and Time Again.
Whitelaw was commissioned an installation for the five-storey stairwell and
produced one of her now renowned dough sculptures. The images show 200 kg of
dough starting a descent from the ceiling into four different sized nets, which
limited and conditioned its vital movement. The dough was captivating; its
fleshy-like, slow movements seemed to belong to an organic being trapped by
unanimated structures built by men. At the beginning, its advancing through the
first net was nearly imperceptible. Only tiny bits were lost, falling into the
second net like a sketch of a left trace. And I found myself mesmerized by that
moment, holding breath at each falling. I felt part of it, I saw time
unfolding, and I saw the beauty of a simple yet powerful symbolic thing as the
dough. Flour, water and salt, equally proportioned. Nourishment and matter.
Effort. Effort to reach its goal, the last net, guided by the force of gravity
and, why not, Fate.
After a couple of hours, the dough freed itself into
a stalactite-like shape, longing for its next stop, while other bits of it were
already reaching the end of the journey. But time was too short for it, water
evaporated, mixing with people’s breath, and the dough dried out.
Dust to dust.
End note: Amelia - Newton - Whitelaw's recent show reviewed on Dazed Digital.
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