CityLife

Castlefield Gallery takes a close look at Practical Truths

EXHIBIT: G. Leddington Work: Magazine (Jackie)

THE role of art as social commentator is long established, but so too is the desire of artists to manipulate their observers.

It is in this context that the latest exhibition at Castlefield Gallery, a joint show called Practical Truths, asks some challenging questions about the role of visual culture as commentator via some clever pieces of manipulation.

Mostly documentary-style AV installations, the exhibition plays with the idea of the narrative concept, of subjectivity and illusion. In so doing, the work reflect a strong sense of scepticism about the concept of facts and the idea of history as absolute.

Take Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan’s film The Reapers, in which the artists aim to make a without prejudice film about a group of pigeon hunters who still catch pigeons via traditional methods.

Programme manager Clarissa Corfe explains: “The methods they use are quite historic and quite inhumane, really. They feed a pigeon up, tie their legs together and hoist them into a tree to attract other pigeons for them to shoot.

“It’s filmed in a documentary style that doesn’t imply any of the filmmakers’ opinions, but there’s this sinister piece of music composed by Oliver Messiaen that alludes to something dark happening.”

This kind of subtle manipulation occurs in much of the work in Practical Truths. Olivia Plender’s fauxcumentary Monitor re-enacts a real life 1960s BBC documentary called Private View with actors playing the parts of stereotype artists.

Timeless illusion

To add to the timeless illusion, the film is being shown on a traditional white projector screen.

Ben Rivers’ tale of a Russian immigrant with a hoarding problem is filmed on 16mm Bolex film – a format popular with early TV programme makers and used in a manually wound camera – making the contemporary documentary look like anything other than a present day film.

G. Leddington’s reproduction of a found magazine called Bunte featuring an interview with the recently widowed Jackie Onassis in black and white, removing the colourful layout of the original 1960s publication (displayed alongside the film on a plinth), forces us to look at the fine detail of the page, while Jenna Collins’ animation about an elderly lady and her kitchen is made entirely in Microsoft Word in response to a remark made by her grandmother and as a means of reattaching visual arts to language.

Clarissa adds: “Myself and our director, Kwong Lee, were interested in the links between art and documentary, and that’s something that artists are grappling with on a regular basis.

“The artists were interested in ideas of authorship and the way an artist can use a piece of information and either exclude a wider context or focus on an individual aspect of a story or issue. The ones we’ve selected are interested in the dichotomy between the universal and the individual.

“They all resonated with the theme of the exhibition in different ways, but all focus around the ideas of trying to look at universal truths of human nature either through the fact they couldn’t be defined within an historical time or looking at the themes more directly.”

Practical Truths is at Castlefield Gallery, Hewitt St, until Sunday, September 27. Free.