December 17, 2021 |
Fancy cramming one last exhibition in before you retire to the settee for Christmas? For all you East Londoners, you’ve got this weekend, and this weekend only, to head down to Ridley Road Project Space for Line Of Flight. Curated by Joe Bobowicz, with assistance from Laurie Barron, the exhibition explores how alternatives to capitalism can exist within capitalism itself. Derived from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophic concept of the same name, Line Of Flight explores “incidents where desire flees the structure of capitalism,” explains Bobowicz. “In other words, its own alternatives are immanent. Flickers of these alternatives can be seen in every work, each of which distill a moment that is directed to an alternative or that laments capitalism’s failures.”
Amongst those exhibiting works is Mark Leckey, who has cartooned a fairytale landscape, which has an underbelly that mimics the gloomy flyover the artist constructed for his Tate Britain exhibition, O’ Magic Power of Bleakness, in 2019. There is also a piece by Jamie Reid dubbed Lament for Croydon, made in 1970 when the artist was a student at Croydon College – a drawing that criticises inner-city design for containing people as opposed to letting them define their own narratives outside the capitalist space. “Now, it takes on new meaning as those sixties and seventies developments in Croydon are now gentrified with slick, luxury flats and franchises such as Boxpark,” adds Bobowicz.
‘Lambeth Walk’ (2002), Simon Wheatley
The exhibition is fuelled by the desire for an alternative. Be it Andrés Branco, who took a bus window from 2000 and etched it in graffiti tags growing up. Or Simon Wheatley’s photography of the capital’s youth, who would adopt luxury insignia, like the Burberry Novacheck, and make it their own. What unites such works is the impulse to chase something, anything else, than that is already written for us. Even if we can achieve that glimpse of otherness only momentarily.
Top artwork: ‘A Changeling Can Change’ (2020), Mark Leckey. ‘Lines Of Flight’ is open at Ridley Road Project Space December 18-20, 11am-6pm.
‘Duk’ (2021), Kieran Leach
