ART
Flagellation
EVAN ANTHONY.
and is venting a rather large amount of spleen against the anomalies of his country, using the American flag as his metaphor
of protest. The ICA cancelled his iconoclas- tic show in February, because—according
to Morrel—of the Arts Council's exerting pressure 'for political reasons.' (The Arts Council unsurprisingly denies this.) Be that as it may, the flags appear uninhibitedly in the current show, not as happy harm- less shopping bags or trendy T-shirts (which is as far as anyone tends to go with the Union Jack), but as stuffed objects and parts of paintings intended, I imagine, to shock us into questioning what the symbol stands for.
There is little doubt about the message, but it is too repetitious and too shrill to allow anyone to concentrate upon the work critically, unless to comment upon the skill of the stitchery of the stuffed items. It is difficult to get beyond the propaganda im- pact of the flag: draping a funeral caisson, banging like a punching bag, dangling like a penis, encasing testes pierced by an arrow. As you may gather', it is an unrelenting tirade; eventually it alienates, like a one- note whine. The painting is more of the same: irony in the form of a piece of star or stripe painted inside pebble-shaped ob- jects, linked together forming an atomic explosion; deep pessimism spelled out by flag symbols peeping out over, while dis- appearing under, a constellation of rubble.
I do not question Morrel's sincerity, and I am not untouched by his disillusionment, but the overall effect is uncomfortably hysterical; his work does not deepen my concern and I think it should. If only some of his wounds can heal before he gets to 'mom' and 'apple pie', he may have some- thing important to say.
Philip Hicks, in a subtler and less hysteri- cal manner also makes us re-examine symbols. Across the corridor, in another room in the Camden Arts Centre. this English artist is exhibiting reliefs, construc- tions, and sculptures in a show called Viet- nam Requiem. His paintings and prints on the same theme are on view at the Robert Self Gallery, Horseshoe Yard, Brook Street. Hicks's work is also propaganda, but it succeeds in being more than didactic preaching; and his exhibition is. as he says, not simply 'a Vietnam protest, but a state- ment about war and human nature—and not just the obvious and horrific things.'
The medal-shaped constructions, ob- viously ironic, are moving without being sentimental. When, in Boy and veteran, the American flag is used, along with a map of Vietnam, as background, the criti- cism is neither harangue nor dramatic indictment: the viewer is drawn in, im- mediately involved in self-examination, faced with the downcast eyes of the young soldier and the frank stare of the older man. The paintings and prints are less successful, bringing no fresh insight to the portrayal of familiar subject matter. It is altogether. though, a sensitive and affecting body of work.
On a happier note, the aquatints of American artist Francis Kelly, at Heal's Mansard Gallery, are a must for sailors who don't have their sea legs but wish they did. Kelly prefers to draw his boats before they set sail. A scrupulously rep- resentational artist, he draws it as he sees it, and with admirable skill. Launching, one of his Nazare prints, is especially fine; bathed in blue, with pools of light silhouet- ting men at work, an intricate interplay of planes is sophisticatedly constructed.
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