Someone has built a
pre-school, prehistoric monument inside Bristol's Spike Island, and it's great.
I’m in a small room, roughly a five-foot square, with two
doors. The walls are made from paper and card, structured by a wooden frame.
Two are lined with shelves made from bamboo cane and string, on which are an assortment of objects; dollops and curls of plaster,
trinket-sized clay sculptures, geometric card constructions, a tray of espresso
cups (Material Tests, 2006-2016).
The room is part of a warren of spaces squeezed
into the gallery at Spike Island as part of Michael Beutler's exhibition Pump House. The gallery is partitioned by makeshift walls
built from multitudinous materials; pastel-coloured corrugated card (Elefant und Schwein, 2010/2016) contrasts
with smooth, thin shiny-silver metal sheets (Fat Potpourri, 2016) and magazine pages bundled up inside colourful
netting to make rudimentary building blocks (Sausage Walls, 2014/2016).
Another room holds big cubic lampshades made from tissue paper glued across
a wire frame (Square Porticus Lamps, 2016) which hang from the ceiling, glowing dimly.
Beneath the lamps is a table engulfed in models and diagrams; (A-Frame Table, 2007/2016 and Handtools, 2003-15) schematics that
range from accurate, architectural style models, to rough, misshapen material
tests and indecipherable sketches.
Faux-machinery dotted throughout the show is constructed
from cardboard and plywood. One machine seems to be pressing out reflective
silver cardboard, but doesn’t have any actual working parts (Fat Potpourri, 2016).
The childlike construction materials and the playful assemblies
give the impression of having stumbled across something incomplete, temporary
and mutable. The installation produces an unfeigned sense of discovery, and this is amplified by the impression that some parts of the maze of spaces are out of
bounds or maybe just not yet ready for display. At the rear of the exhibition a corridor of space is filled
with stacks of plywood and coloured paper, paintbrushes, drainpipes and wooden
planks (Kids Workshop Table, 2016 and The Garden, 2012). It feels like a storage area. It gives the impression of being behind
the scenes and that there is still more to be built in this show.
Videos shown on monitors give a clue as to this installation's manufacture. One screen shows a room-sized loom being used by a small production team to weave
together worn-out fabrics (Produzieren, 2000). The machine is completely manual, made entirely (it
seems) from plywood and string. Its outcome, a multi-coloured, textural,
loose-bound fabric, is strewn on the floor in front of the monitor (Carpet, 2012). The machine is as
makeshift and temporary as its product.
Though there is no culmination of material or
structural ideas moving from one space to the next, the exhibition provides an
experiential denouement. Having first observed the apparently unprepared stacks
of material surrounded by makeshift machines and tools, and then the lower-lit, claustrophobic studio spaces, crammed with schematics, models,
tests and diagrams, the high ceilinged, skylit central space in the Spike Island
gallery is a release. It contains a series of large-scale constructions made from repeating cylindrical card and string configurations (Tea Factory, 2016).
They form grand arches and columns attached to the ceiling by ropes and pulleys. The structures remind me of both a prehistoric monument (a
cardboard Stonehenge) and of a child’s play area (a bouncy castle). Even this work is left apparently unfinished. On a plywood platform
beneath the central arches are empty tubs of PVA glue, a paint tray and a scraper.
It is a grand culmination to an exhibition that combines the
materials of pre-school with precise construction and the modes of industry
with the aesthetic of the hand built, always left meticulously unfinished.
Travis Riley
Michael Beutler
Pump House
Spike Island, Bristol (BS1)
16 April - 19 June 2016
Image Captions:
Michael Beutler, Haus Beutler (2014/16) Mixed media. Installation view, Pump House (2016) Spike Island. Image courtesy Spike Island, photograph by Stuart Whipps
Michael Beutler, Haus Beutler (2014/16) Mixed media. Installation view, Pump House (2016) Spike Island. Image courtesy Spike Island, photograph by Stuart Whipps
Michael Beutler, Pump House (2016) Installation view, Spike Island. Image courtesy Spike Island, photograph by Stuart Whipps
Michael Beutler, Tea Factory (2016) Card, glue, dye, rope, wood, metal pipes, pulleys. Installation view, Pump House (2016) Spike Island. Image courtesy Spike Island, photograph by Stuart Whipps
This sounds like an interesting lesson in how to recycle. Reminds me of an article I read a while back about this guy who kept plastic bottles in self storage until he had enough to build a house from all of them! It apparently had great insulation too!
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