Movements for Staying Alive - Modern Art Oxford - Review

 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Outside, despite the humidity, it is threatening to rain. The pavements are slick from a recent downpour, yet it is warm, very warm. I am back in Oxford (the closest thing I have to a stomping ground) and have dragged my parents along to explore ‘Movements for Staying Alive’ at Modern Art Oxford.

I say dragged, but they’re willing participants. Modern Art Oxford being the location of my formative contemporary arts memories, it is always nice to see what is on. The exhibition – on display until September 7 – combines new commissions with 20^th century work, all designed to explore embodiment, movement, connection.

The first artwork encountered one of the new commissions: Estampa’s Archival Corpus. A video, bisecting the room diagonally, shows AI mapped individuals working in an archive. The walls display images found in said archive, artificially grouped based on visual similarity, challenging visitors to investigate the connections and consider the physical nature of making, archiving and retrieving art. Organising as an embodied process. I am a touch unclear if the artwork makes any broad claims about artificial intelligence, but its use is well-mannered and restrained to this organising function. A more interesting display shows a sequence of movement through photos of different people. A togetherness unearthed through AI archival work.     

In the studio space we find Baum and Leahy’s Cellumonials. A sensory exploration of cells and ourself. There are scented cushions and oddly shaped futons. The entire display is a slam of maximalism within this very standard room. Over on a table, strange wooden shapes designed to be slotted together. Both my parents make quite different artworks, yet both talk about balance, either as a physical necessity or as a grounding concept. The entire studio space works well for exploration and decompression.

Upstairs, another commission: Leap Then Look’s Shaping. There are a handful of families with small children engaging with the space. It is playpark-esque. Feeling our engagement would be disruptive, we turn instead to a room filled with images of dancers plastered at odd angles. Videos of the dancers play at various speeds. It invites you to mimic or move as you wish. A father is boogying with a small child. People are using and activating the space.

The largest room is home to the final commission: Jane Castree’s Creativity in Motion. Metal frame objects, drapes of velvet, wooden bars affixed to the wall. Throughout, there have been floor stickers indicating whether the viewer should observe or interact. It is here where I realise the trick of the exhibition. A visitor assistant interacts with an object, walking over a bridge. They unlock the artwork. My family is no stranger to muddling in and interacting – we are very comfortable in art environments and face little threshold fear. Nevertheless, the action of the visitor assistant removed whatever remaining barriers to interaction I held. Rather than the observer, the reviewer, I decided to actually experience the art.

Caleb White - the author - activating a sculpture (?) 

Quite a lot of time was spent getting into, then painstakingly crawling out of, a metal tube. The more we interacted, the more others seemed to. Of course, we were far from trailblazers – the visitor assistants would periodically use one or another of the given artworks. While there were more children playing with the artworks, many adults also engaged. Through their engagement the space became embodied, and the artworks activated.

David White interacts with the artworks...

There is an interesting question here as to whether there is a difference in how a child and an adult experiences this. Is the notion of play different? Is the conscious decision to act differently in a gallery fundamentally different from the impulse to play? Was our interactions play? Or were we fulfilling the want of the gallery to interact. Would a more disruptive behaviour have been to simply walk past, subtly encouraging others to do likewise? And was there a limit to play? We were remaining cautious. No one tried to rip anything off the wall, but would that not, itself, be an authentic moment of embodiment?

Once we had – effectively – been given permission to ‘play’, we returned to Shaping. Co-developed by the artists and a group of 16–19-year-olds, on closer inspection it was more like the memory of a play park. A wall of bizarre tube-like costumes led to some interesting photos as my family continued our exploration of being present and interacting. Supplementing the commissioned work were video-works of choreography from Yvonne Rainer, dating back to the 60s. The room had very coherent themes of space, body, presence, and movement.

Interestingly, a visitor assistant approached my mother to inform her that a child (not hers) was using a piece of the room incorrectly and that she should stop them. Make of that what you will.

Partially because my family can’t resist a pseudo-intellectual sparring match, and partially because the exhibition genuinely did spark conversation, we spent quite a while discussing the art and our role within it down in the – unfortunately garish – café. Overall, I have to hand it to Modern Art Oxford. On first impression I thought the gallery might be trying to hard to make a popular exhibition. Yet the different manners in which we ultimately chose to interact with the artwork, and the fact that if I were to re-visit, I would probably act in different ways, left me with a strong impression and a lot of material. This review is far, far shorter than it could have been.

If I can schedule it, I’d love to attend one of the Dance Activation events choreographed by Castree. This exhibition fully succeeds at being an entertaining, interesting, popular and questioning show. Highly recommend.

‘Movements for Staying Alive’ is on display until Sept 7 (Ground Floor Galleries until Sept 1) at Modern Art Oxford and is free to enter.           

 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆