Unrestful art

Abstract

It was difficult to know what to make of the exhibition Rest & its discontents. The Hubbub interdisciplinary group has cast-iron academic credentials, but many of the artworks it exhibited in London suffocated under the leaden weight of academia. I left the exhibition more discontented than rested. This, however, was not the fault of the curator Robert Devcic. Lumbered with many exhibits that were visually dull or, in the case of audio and video material, long-winded, and verbose explanatory panels, he made the most of the Mile End Art Pavilion's expansive views of an adjacent lake. The exhibition's floorplan evoked the work-in-progress ambience of a laboratory, encouraging visitors to meander between timber display booths designed by Calum Storrie. Unfortunately, people with experience of medical congresses risked having déjà vu of being bored by lacklustre research poster exhibitions. Featuring works by over 25 contributors, the exhibition drew on Hubbub, a 2 year residency undertaken by 50 international artists, broadcasters, humanities researchers, mental health experts, scientists, social scientists, and writers. Led by Durham University (Durham, UK), the residency was based at The Hub at Wellcome Collection in London, and was funded by a £1 million Wellcome Trust grant. Coinciding with the exhibition, Hubbub released the results of The Rest Test, its online public survey undertaken in 134 countries, attracting 18 000 respondents who were asked what rest meant to them and what they would do if they had more time to rest. Broadcaster and writer Claudia Hammond and designers at LUSTlab analysed thousands of words given in answers and sorted them into categories. These data were visualised as a fabric pattern, which was used to upholster six benches, provided as exhibition seating. It was an unnecessarily complex visualisation of a preliminary sampling of the vast dataset, not a definitive interpretation, but at least the benches were comfortable places to rest. The Peckham Health Centre, an interwar experiment in community healthcare that promoted healthy leisure for workers, inspired James Wilkes' The Lathe Had Melted, comprising four fictional texts alluding to the centre's founders' published and unpublished writings. Inscribing Wilkes' texts across the pavilion's large windows was an appropriate homage to the Peckham Centre's renowned modernist concrete and glass architecture, but the strong late afternoon sunshine compromised their legibility. Outside, artist Patrick Coyle's The Floating Thirty-Nine, an installation of adapted solar-powered pond ornaments floating on the lake, became a high point of the exhibition as daylight faded and dusk fell. Inspired by the Jewish Shabbat, or day of rest, the number of lights represented the 39 categories of labour proscribed by Judaism on the Sabbath, but the installation also acknowledged the universality of religious observance of a day devoted to worship and rest. Although the exhibition contributors acknowledged the importance of rest to mind and body, they side-stepped what they termed difficulties in defining rest, instead focusing on its opposites, unrest and restlessness, caused by stress, noise, and work among other things. The venue was noisy, and threatened to become noisier when Nina Garthwaite's Default Mode Radio Network went on air. The importance of having time to allow one's mind to wander was addressed more satisfactorily in Hilary Powell, Hazel Morrison, and Felicity Callard's interactive audio installation, The Cubiculum. Seated in a monkish cell, it was possible to select from audio recordings relating six pivotal case studies in the history of mind wandering. An excerpt from Virginia Woolf's essay The Mark on Wall was exemplary. Art exhibitions are about looking and seeing, not reading screeds of explanatory text. By not defining what constitutes rest and perversely focusing on so-called discontents, Hubbub failed to pinpoint the significance of rest for neurological health. The definitive evocation of rest in contemporary art is Cornelia Parker's performance work in collaboration with the actor Tilda Swinton, who lay supine in a glass vitrine for 6 hours. First shown at the Serpentine Gallery in London, UK, it was reprised 16 years later at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where the installation text was succinct: “The Maybe, 1995/2013. Living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water and spectacles.” At Mile End, only Coyle's lake installation came anywhere near the eloquent simplicity of The Maybe. Much else was conceptually convoluted, with scientists defaulting to data gathering and preliminary conclusions based on partial analysis of these data, distorted through a clouded prism of artistic expression. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal, rather than a gallery display, might serve Hubbub better. Rest & its discontents Mile End Art Pavilion, London, UK, from Sept 30–Oct 30, 2016For more information see http://www.hubbubresearch.org/For the complementary publication The Rest Compendium see http://hubbubresearch.org/restlesscompendium/ Rest & its discontents Mile End Art Pavilion, London, UK, from Sept 30–Oct 30, 2016 For more information see http://www.hubbubresearch.org/ For the complementary publication The Rest Compendium see http://hubbubresearch.org/restlesscompendium/