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g39: Neil McNally: death is colder than love - 16 Feb 2008 to 15 Mar 2008 Current Exhibition |
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Neil McNally: death is colder than love Neil McNally is a cross-disciplinary artist. Within much of his recent work is an interrogation of the accepted histories of the 'Art World', often subverting art references in a deadpan manner. Working with film, performance, painting, writing, installation, drawing and photography, he has an ambivalent engagement towards the narratives of cultural and artistic production. The work itself is a mixture of knowing irony, naivety and playfulness. Loaded with references, the work mimics other artists and in the process of production reveals an affection for contemporary work while mocking the gallery conventions and expectations of art audiences. For his show at g39, Neil will be presenting a 'wall painting', a title used by other artists before him. McNally alludes both to the cave paintings at Lascaux and to Sol LeWitt whose wall drawings are usually executed by people other than the artist himself. LeWitt's practice is founded on the notion that the idea itself is the art, not the execution. Lewitt has said, I want to produce something I would not be ashamed to show Giotto. McNally has said, I want to get blotto, play Lotto, and throw some risotto at a Giotto. For McNally's reconstruction he has delivered a set of instructions to the gallery to be passed on to other artists, but the result opens out this question even further. The instructions encourage freedom and experimentation and the idea is subverted. Elsewhere in the show is a re-working of Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho. McNally's version, however, is made with Gus Van Sant's much derided 1998 remake, rather than with Hitchcock's original or Gordon's reworking: authorship is twice removed. Van Sant's shot by shot copy was publicly condemned as the worst remake in film history. Christopher Doyle (Psycho's cinematographer) has given credit to Van Sant for f--king Hollywood for $20 million to make an MFA thesis about originality. Like Hitchcock's Psycho, it's a remake that people are aware of even though they might not have seen it. McNally is interested in the social function of film and its entanglement with personal memory. The show will also include new painting and sculptural works that test this 'ping-pong' game of reference and counter reference to its limit. Born in Pontypool, Neil studied at Goldsmiths from 2001-05 before returning to Wales. He exhibits widely in the UK and Europe including Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2006, and was a recipient of the Celeste Art Prize in 2007. |
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