Amalia Pica: For Shower Singers

Amalia Pica

For Shower Singers

14 December 2012 - 10 February 2013

Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford is one of the largest galleries in the South East devoted to modern and contemporary art, and in December 2012 they put on an exhibition For Shower Singers by Amalia Pica. I found it to be one of the most stunning and thought provoking exhibitions I have been to in a long time.

Amalia appears to work particularly in water colours, however she does include many other mediums such as film, collage and installations.

When entering the upper gallery the first piece of work that instantly grabbed my attention was the collage piece called Strangers in a Common Land 2012 which was in part commissioned by Modern Art Oxford. This depicts a monochrome collage with the only colour being the bunting running the length of the work. When speaking with the curator after attending the exhibition I was stunned to be told how temporary the works of art exhibited were. For instance the collage shown above was made particularly for the space and, once, taken down will be destroyed.  

Another area of the exhibition that gave me much amusement depicted a cardboard stage, a soap microphone and a tacky red tape carpet. All of these are symbolic of fame and convey how fleeting it is and  how in this day and age so many people become famous for simply being famous! It is clear to see from the image above that the stage itself cannot be sat on, however I was told that in the course of the exhibition an elderly lady had a little sit down and left a pretty permanent dent in the stage! So I suppose in a way the exhibition itself is rather confusing as we are bought up "TO NEVER TOUCH/INTERACT WITH ART" and this is what I believe Amalia Pica is trying to challenge us with, this preconceived idea of what is and isn't art. 

Another theme of the exhibition was communication. For example the slide show very irritatingly named Babble, blabber, chatter, gibber, jabber, patter, prattle, rattle, yammer, yada, yada. yada 2010 consists of a series of eighty 35mm slides which are projected in a sequence that shows the artist spelling out the letters of the work's title using semaphore flags. The interesting idea behind this work as with many of Pica's other works is the irony of the attempt to communicate when there is no-one to respond. The figure is in the middle of the desert and is in fact signalling to no one. This message is repeated in many of the other works shown in For Shower Singers.

I found the exhibition a true mark of original thought and will be very interested to see where Amalia Pica's journey leads her.

The Raven's Eye Critic