Prompted by Beccy Kennedy’s thoughtful comments on the Still Dynamics exhibition, I popped over the river to the Jerwood Space yesterday lunchtime. The result is this somewhat tabloid counterblast — hoping to prompt some more of you to go along to see it for yourself.
The most eye-catching work in the show is Seunghee Kang’s giant brightly coloured embroidery, extending the whole width of the room, mysteriously entitled Its wonderland for stranger. It’s a work with a lot going on in it: a busy and distressing street scene with loads of iPods for sale in vending machines, and security cameras everywhere. In one of the shops on the other side of the street there appears to be a knife fight going on. Anti-war slogans are painted on a pedestrian crossing and onto the rubber wristbands of an arm mysteriously raised in the foreground — perhaps meant to be that of the artist / onlooker. But what attracts the attention most is the figure in the middle of the composition. A grotesquely-shaped nude female caricature looking surprisingly like Cherie Booth QC, partially covered in a Union Jack. And in a cloud of gas emerging from her posterior is some Korean script. Just a jumble of letters, but if any Korean-speakers can spot an anagram in there anywhere I’d be interested in hearing from you.
The show closes on 20 December. I’d echo a lot of Beccy’s comments. I love Sangjun Roh’s fun cardboard models and the contemplative compositions of Francesca Cho; Seunghee Kang’s other works — cartoon-like pictures painted on what look like sheets of steel are worth going back for, while Sea Hyun Lee’s Between Red, pictured in Beccy’s review, is altogether more vibrant and surreal in real life, though it’s difficult to really study the works because they’re on the wall in the cafe area. I think I’ll pop back today for lunch to look at them properly.