Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen breezed through Cape Town to launch an exhibition of his major film installations Lorna Ferguson
With the demise of the Johannesburg Biennale there have been no mechanisms in place to bring internationally renowned contemporary artists to South Africa to invigorate and inform our art scene.
Which makes the appearance of film-installation artist Steve McQueen a triumph. Thirty-year-old McQueen last year’s Tate Gallery Turner Prize?winner is in Cape Town for a one-person show, the inaugural exhibition of?Thomas Mulcaire’s new Institute for Contemporary Art Cape Town (ICAC).?
McQueen has, in the past two years alone, shown at the Museum of Modern Art?in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Boijmans van?Beuningen in Rotterdam, which makes his current visit to South Africa to?be in attendance at his exhibition nothing short of a privilege for South?African contemporary art audiences.
Curator Thomas Mulcaire describes the exhibition of moving images as a “concise?but rigorous survey of McQueen’s film installations”. Four works are on?show at the Michaelis Art Gallery: Bear (1993), Five Easy Pieces (1995), Deadpan (1997), and Exodus (1992/7).
Mulcaire describes Bear as follows: “McQueen casts himself wrestling?another protagonist in nude balletic combat, moving between apprehension,?aggression and filial eroticism. In the camera angles and quick edits it is?impossible for me not to recall Scorsese’s Raging Bull or other beautiful?very early morning pugilist rituals. What should one make of the fact that?both protagonists are black, and male? What should one do with a two-dimensional moving scrotum the size of one’s head?”
McQueen describes the work as an “emotional roller coaster where context is?as much as content. Two black males are stripped, interacting physically?and sexually, which inevitably raises the question about how people look at?them.”
McQueen has made about 10 short black-and-white and colour films. His works?are invariably shown under very measured and considered conditions.?
Projected to fill the walls of darkened, pristinely empty spaces, viewers?find themselves overwhelmed by the scale of sensation and cognitive and?dramatic stimulus.
The Turner Prize jury awarded the R200?000 prize to McQueen for the?”poetry and clarity of his vision, the range of his work, its emotional?intensity and economy of means” and declared themselves excited by his?”continuing intellectual and technical evolution”.
The most widely admired of his award-winning installations was Deadpan, in which McQueen re-enacts Buster Keaton’s most famous stunt from the 1928 film, Steamboat Bill Jnr.
It features a recurring scene, shot from multiple angles, of a house facade?crashing down on the unflinching artist, who, through precision staging,?reappears still resolutely standing as the dust settles, having?miraculously escaped harm by passing through an unglazed window. The stunt?leaves the viewer standing in the proximate space frozen in empathy.?This anxious immobility is demanded by implied, shared risk and spatial?dislocation, neither of which are relieved until reexperienced through?recurred viewing, each of the 14 takes refilmed from a different point of view.
McQueen says that the “gag” is a narrative, which not only questions the?way we look at things but is also a very physical thing: “It makes you very?aware of your own presence and your own body. You are a participant, not a?passive viewer. The whole idea of making it a silent experience is so that when people walk into the space they become aware of themselves, of their?own breathing.”
“The best action,” says Mulcaire, “is inaction. To remain still. Quiet.?Breathless. McQueen is the player as much as he is the pawn in the game. A position which also has resonance for the role of the viewer in the?construction of meaning.”
In answer to the question of formalism in his work, McQueen acknowledges?that the element of framing is important; not only directly through the institution but also by the camera, the window and the facade. But he says?that “what’s inside the film, the content, is more important”. The subtlety?of his fusion of content and form are not overtly or over worked but he is?intent on looking at things with a different eye and mind.
While studying art in London McQueen decided that he wanted to become a?film-maker, so he applied for and won a place at the Tisch School of Arts?in New York. Once there he realised that he “didn’t like the way the film school did things” and that he now hankered to work as an artist. “I?was split in half.” At one point he is reported to have said: “They?wouldn’t let you throw the camera up into the air.”
Within three years he had filmed Catch, a silent colour installation?commissioned for Documenta X. Catherine David quotes McQueen in her?catalogue essay for this show as saying: “There is no right or wrong angle for something. The idea of putting the camera in an unfamiliar position is?simply to do with film language. Sometimes it is spectacular, sometimes it is ugly, sometimes it is uninteresting. But it has to do with looking at?things in a different way. By putting the camera at a different angle on?the ceiling or under a glass table we are questioning this narrative as?well as the way we are looking at things.”
Exodus is the most narrative of the works on exhibition. McQueen relates?how one of his lecturers at art school advised students to always carry a?pencil and pad. McQueen revised this by constantly carrying a Super 8?camera with him. While walking down Brick Lane in the East End of London he?noticed two West Indian men dressed in trilbies and overcoats, who seemed?”to come out of the crowd and confusion and both were carrying coconut?palms in a sort of silent procession. It was a beautiful moment. Magic. It?seemed like nothing, but it was something.” The pair eventually boarded a?bus and one of the men leaned out of the bus window and waved,?acknowledging the artist and the camera.
McQueen expressed his explicit satisfaction with Mulcaire’s organisation of?his exhibition at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis Art Gallery.?”There are only two other important places that I know of where the?students and the artist have such clear access, where the possibilities of?education extend right to the core. The first is Portikus in Frankfurt and?the other is the Renaissance Society in Chicago, both of which operate within universities. The ICA Cape Town seems to me to be also one of those?places. I’ve been able to talk and interact with the students and it’s the?richest experience possible for an artist.”
Mulcaire anticipates bringing three shows a year of the calibre of Steve McQueen to Cape Town. He hopes this will eventually contribute to the creation of a context for the building of a museum dedicated to?contemporary art in South Africa?
The Steve McQueen exhibition is a co-production with the Sala Mendoza in?Caracas and the Museu de Arte Moderna in So Paulo, where it will be shown in April 2001 before travelling to the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City?in June 2001. The project and the tour itinerary were developed by Mulcaire and Carlos Basualdo, who is working with Okwui Enwezor on Documenta XI.
The Steve McQueen exhibition runs at the Institute for Contemporary Art at the Michaelis Art Gallery, 37 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town until December 22. For more information Tel: 083 367 7168
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