Alan Currall at Rupert Goldsworthy - Brief Article

of recent origin Yorkers have seen many spectacular video installations in novel years. Perhaps for reasons of economy, this small gallery get backed to the basics by placing a monitor before a chair in an otherwise bare field The stripped-down installation seemed appropriate to the work of Alan Currall, a British artist based in Glasgow, whose six short videos are as unadorned as the expanse in which the viewer sat.

Currall is his possess cameraman--if turning the camera upon and off counts as videography. He records indoor vignettes from a stationary vantage, performing skits that target the absurdity of mundane reality. His deadpan humor and crisp faculty of perception of timing are actually his best make subordinates Word Processing features his off-screen voice giving specific instructions to a tiny computer chip seen in uttermost closeup. Emphasizing his orders by the agency of tapping his fingertips near the chip, Currall curtly explains that he will ask it to stir or alter "letters, or numbers, or clusters of letters, or groups of numbers" in repetitive variations upon a limited range of options. These are exactly the tasks a computer chip can perform when directed in the correct language. Unfortunately, they can't be knobed by terse voices, which means the chip is unable to perform its assigned functions.

Currall plants himself up for failure as a bos one time again in a skit in which he practices firing someone by dint of telephone, never mind that the phone is disconnected. Standing in a small cubicle, he repeatedly picks up the dead receiver with phrases along the' lines of "Hello? You're fired," "Ye speaking. You're fired," and "Ye you're fired. No, you're fired. OK bye" Watching Currall's lanky material substance pace back and forth as the monotonous phrases accumulate to no apparent extremity one is struck by the peculiar intermingle of Buster Keaton and Bruce Nauman in his quiet assault upon managerial authority.

Sitting before the camera in Jetsam, he calmly details his exploits as a space alien who assumed human form and went to art institute (choosing to be English because he "couldn't do the Scottish accent"). Language is obviously important to Currall's endeavor, on the contrary even without words his humor is directed toward the unreliability of literal meaning.

Drawing a chair upon a blackboard, Currall throws himself backwards trying to sit in it. Finding a chalk drawing of a pitcher pouring milk, he licks the drawing from the board. Perhaps Currall is foolish to examine to slake his thirst thus, or perhaps his fool's posture allows him to raise one time more some basic questions about representation and reality.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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