Eva Rothschild + lads
There was SO much in this exhibition. Weirdly although the two shows feel worlds apart thematically it felt like two ends of a spectrum I felt really at home with. One one end objects, stories and situations that evoke play, speculation, working out and imagining with others and then other end amazing DIY queer ladies talking autonomy and social context and societal structures.
There was so much in the play part that spoke of LARP (albeit Adam James!), use of objects, the environments and setting up situations for people to respond to. Lots of references to look up and just nice things like this publication that gathered kids own stories, told by them about their adventures at the adventure playground in the day. Talk of how we undertand ourselves and the world through adaptation and adoptation. Made me think a lot of Beeston and the kids there, risk and kids autonomy. As I said they legit just mention adults on the final panel and are just like, mmmm, yeh. Adults stop playing and that made me think I need to look into that more.
I didnt take many pics of the Oreet / Spence show cos it just didnt feel like that and I guess I just forgot. The show is about chronic illness and death amungst other things and it is really moving in different ways. There is also a lot of strange humour which feels like a cute in joke between these two people across generations. The install is really nice too. Theres nice spaces to sit in and big scrap books and some of Jo's collage work is like literally laminated and pinned into the walls. Not at all your usual Wellcome show and I was thankful for that. The Oreet Ashery videos, Genesis, I only dipped in and out of cos there was a group in doing a 'late' tour or summat and they were sort of in the way but both its flow in episodes and the combo of footage and the slippage of fact and fiction and people playing themselves / others was really nice to see. Themes are heavy but also cos of the taboo around them really fascinating like from the personal perspective or like palliative nurses.
