Although Charles Maggs show, Zombie at the AVA, didn't feature a single brain-eating reanimated corpse, it was a good choice of title. Zombie films, since being basically invented by George A Romero with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, are a varied and inventive form of social critique (as well as being damn gory and scary). In some the zombies provide the horrifying impetus for humans to show their bleakest sides, violent and authoritarian. In some, especially Land of the Dead, the zombies become symbolic of an Other, an evolving sub-class, oppressed and hated by the humans who want to protect their possessions (in this instance brains, but you get the idea) and standard of life. Even the classic structure of the zombie film reflects this symbolism, where a small group of insiders fearfully defend their perimeter from those outside who look the same but are different. It can be seen best in Dawn of the Dead, in which the main characters find their sanctuary in a shopping mall. After clearing up the zombies already living there, they settle down, indulging all their material desires while the zombies scrape at the doors (Read a full synopsis on Wikipedia). Essentially, these zombie movies are a criticism of power structures, capitalism and Western hegemony. Of course some, like Resident Evil are just about how sexy Milla Jovovich is, but as she's the doyenne of all of the above the point is the same.

In Charles Maggs Zombie these zombie ideas are strong. In the video piece Protection the visual language of defensive aggression is distilled from clips from an old TV series. In this instance, two police officers circle menacingly on motorbikes. More significantly than the language uncovered is its source: an innocent light watch on the box contains the posturing and signifiers of a latent exclusionary and correctional force.

A clearer relationship is visible in the series of prints, half titled Suspect, the others called Victim. (read how Charles created the work on his blog. It's important)
Those outside the perimeter are made into the either the silenced Victim of the fear of those inside, and the violent response to that fear, or are the shadowy Suspect, evil and unredeemable. Zombies, of course, are sub-humans and don't deserve rightful recourse to the law. He'll eat your brain unless you act swiftly and with extreme prejudice.

And just in case you believed the Cranberries when they said, " But you see, it's not me, it's not my family," Charles has a final work on the show Monologue, in which he speaks to himself from two screens. The talking heads speak to each other about fear echoing the type of paranoia that I think many of us viewers will find creepily familiar. Indeed it is the symptom of living on the inside. Somebody is going to eat your brains.

Labels: ava, Charles Maggs, contemporary art, south african artist, zombie

Zombie by Charles Maggs
Opening 25 August 08 at 6pm runs until 12 September
At The Association for Visual Art, 35 Church St Cape Town.


www.zombieshow.blogspot.com

Zombie showcases new video and print works by Charles Maggs. The show negotiates the mechanisms of contemporary society and some of its systems, with a particular interest in the accidental consequences, fear and pace have upon them. The results of these accidents are often, in equal parts, banal and horrific. The work is particularly concerned with the delivery mechanisms of this ‘globalised’ fear, the media, and how images from this system can be refigured to suggest alternate readings of these manufactured truths. Zombie is perhaps a reflection of a symptom rather that the condition itself.

Labels: ava, Charles Maggs, zombie

They say if you have pictures of dogs/cats/hedgehogs on your blog it helps with traffic. So I thought I'd show you all my dog Sickert. He likes red balls. I make him attack people by tying bacon to their knees.

They also say if you equate art and sport it makes the one as popular as the other. But we all know this isn't possible. Sport will never be as popular as art. Ever.

There was only one decent work on the recent show at the AVA (Ball Sports), and it's no secret it was my one.

But perusing through some of the other works that somehow made it onto the show, there were some gems. It reminds me that Kirsty Cockerill is doing a great job on that gallery, bringing in a lot of vital (as in the vitamin pills, not as in indispensable) art. Yay, well done. Now hire a painter cause the walls were filthy and I find that distracting. The show was, barring this flaw, nicely curated, with distinct themes coming through in all the different rooms. The first room was all about the body and, as it seems hard to separate it, sexuality. So we had Lawrence Lemoana's unsurprising but pleasant print, Zanele Muholi's itimate moment from the Gay World Cup soccer. There was a nice ball point drawing in there too, but I'm screwed if I can remember who it was. The second room focussed much more on the ball, but also it seemed the politics that are attached to it, so we had some uninspiring Fritha Langerman sculptures of balls with spikes, studs, glass, etc, a nicely oblique floor piece by Elgin Rust of the plans of a cathedral chalked on the floor, maybe slightly overstated by a large steel football in the middle. Stuart Bird presented framed Ten Rand notes stamped with a 2 and 0 to make each one say 2010. Cutely cynical. I was bit annoyed that the price of the work was R2010 and the edition 2010, pushing that cute to twee. I just hope he don't have to cut them all up. Ralph Borland's Jubilee, the exceedingly annoying vuvuzela piece, which I would really like if it didn't grate on my nerves. Playing along a thin line of celebration of death and life, destruction and creation and some other happy binaries, it's best seen from a distance. There was also a piece by Svea Josephy which was pleasant, but I'll reserve my comment because her solo is tomorrow at Bell-Roberts.

Upstairs was all the bits and pieces that didn't tie in. Ed Young finally got to show his verboten kiddy porn piece, The European Collector who Could Gaze Uninterruptedly, which is a very zoomed up video of some kiddies playing naked in a garden. With a ball, in case you didn't get the connection. Apparently he was sneaky in the way he got it onto the show... Also upstairs was Charles Maggs Fight, a rythmic and humourous video of two people fucking each other up. Lovely gratuitous violence.

The show was good, and lots of it interesting. And I'm glad too to see a curated group show, how I miss them. It reminded me why people rather watch soccer.

Labels: ava, ball sports, Charles Maggs, Ed Young, Elgin Rust, Lawrence Lemoana, Ralph Borland, stuart bird, svea josephy, Zanele Muholi