My first successful write-up was about the Recessionists, and since they found out about it, they have been asking me to do another one for one of their other exhibitions, and I thought, I must do it really. Originally, it was just going to be me and Dad, but it ended up being all four of us (my Mum and my Sister as well).
We went to the Pear tree Gallery, in Taunton, the nearest big town to me, and as I walked in and walked around, I was under-whelmed. I was expecting a more complex experience, such as walking through a darkened corridor, looking at both portraits and sculptures relating to death. Instead I entered a single, brightly lit room, with drinks, dips and nachos (as you American say) for refreshment, looking at a variety of black and white photos, trying to guess how they relate to death but not being particularly moved.
Then the sound track began, starting with a brief intro, followed by the heart beats of someone slowly dying. That and further the further sounds suddenly made the visit much creepier. Then my Dad explained to me, these photos are meant to represent the exact moment of death. Looking at them in this light, with the sounds, these photos become extremely haunting.
One such photo was a face shot (there weren't many, but most of them were very spooky). The man depicted had extremely bulging eyes and a small, tight, toothless grin. I thought it was depicting the infamous death pleasure hypothesis, that dieing is the ultimate pleasure. It also crossed my mind that he had taken a strong psycho stimulant like cocaine. My sister reckons that he has HIV/AIDS and is emaciated, or that he has a severe mental illness.
Whilst the face shots were very spooky, most of what was shown seemed to be very abstract photos. There seemed to be a tendency when viewing these abstract photos to look for human features and faces, a very interesting phenomenon.
The overall experience has brought mixed views. Both my mother and sister consider it one of the strangest evenings out they've had, my sister has deemed it "Emo-art" (it does say that this exhibition was partly inspired from "Gothic-punk" i.e. Goths)*. My Dad expanded, that the thing seemed extremely obsessive, in particular the fact that the artist's name is James "Dene" Diamond (James Dene died young). He and many other people feel death is something inappropriate to get obsessive with. Your're probably going to accuse me of parroting other peoples words, so what is Woodnots opinion. I like the exhibition, my only qualm is the fact that only one artists work was there, if there had been other Recessionists works along the same line, then it would be exhilarating.
* I know Goths and Emo's are two very different sub-cultures that shallowly resemble each other by enjoying the colour black, but my sister doesn't (well, I don't think she does).