A Darkling Dive into Dystopian DIY Remembrance

Cathy Lomax and Alex Michon are haunted by the art and socio-political British culture (and disappointed by the omissions) in The Horror Show! at Somerset House.

Leigh Bowery, Hooded Cape Ensemble, 1988

In the week in which the death of Terry Hall of The Specials was announced, we went off to see The Horror Show! at Somerset House. Billed as a ‘Twisted Tale of Modern Britain', this blockbuster of a show explores how ‘ideas rooted in horror have informed the last 50 years of creative rebellion’, and there is a lot to absorb in this multi-layered ghost train ride of shapeshifting schlock-horror aesthetics. From the now familiar dernier cri of punk to the darkly fantastical works of 2019 Turner Prize winner Tai Shani; ghosts, ghouls, mysticism, and mayhem feature as a continuing rebellious thread throughout various landscapes of the dark re-imaginings of artistic psyches. 

Tai Shani, The Neon Hieroglyph, 2021

So here we have punk icon Jordan, painted by the underrepresented 70s painter and Duggie Fields contemporary Luciana Marinez, next to a Diamond Dog Bowie. Elsewhere there is a wall of large-scale images of Bat Cave clubsters in their gothy new romantic get ups, and a succession of outrageously attired drag artists sashaying down the stairs in Dick Jewell’s film Descending a Staircase which was shot at the seminal Kinky Gerlinky club night. 

Luciana Martinez de la Rosa, Jordan, 1977, pastel on board

 

The show is in three parts, Monster, Ghost and Witch. Monster is the punky, gothy, drag queeny, Leigh Bowery section. Ghost, as the gallery blurb states, ‘marks the collapse of hyperinflated 80s culture… defining a turning point in time between the dawn of a digital age of faceless audiences and invisible cyber wars’. So this is where Tricky’s trip hop meets the situationist sub-texts of Laura Grace Ford who reimagines London as a haunted house in her large-scale installation. Witch, the exhibition’s final act, celebrates the emergence of a younger generation often placing their work alongside their antecedents –Juno Calypso, for instance, is offset by Jane Arden. Each section is introduced by panels of engaging text which underscore the work with pertinent sociopolitical and metaphysical musings.

Juno Calypso, A Dream in Green, 2015

Jane Arden, Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven poster, 1970-71, designed by Alan Aldridge

 

However as is so often the case in an ambitious show of this size there are shortcomings and omissions, and the interesting countercultural perspective was, for us, almost inevitably haunted by the phantoms of those who were not featured. We particularly missed the visceral multi-faceted work of Delaine Le Bas whose outsider perspective has often called out racism, hierarchy, and refugee and women shaming. The same applies to the horror-inflected films and performances of Paul Kindersley, with their current-day queer eye. And surely the very British DIY filmmaker Andrew Kotting, whose films include Diseased and Disorderly and Their Rancid Words Stagnate Our Ponds, would have been a perfect fit. As would something of the English art folk horror investigated by Michael Bracewell in the The Dark Monarch, a show he co-curated at Tate St Ives in 2009.

 

It is obvious that the curators worked hard to create a non-hierarchical overview of the influence of spooky stuff to scare the nation. But the bones of those skeletons still left in the unopened cupboard continued to rattle around our brains and as we exited the gift shop we couldn’t help but think of Terry Hall’s plaintive voice singing ‘this town is coming like a ghost town’… a line that links the now and then so perfectly but like the majority of post-punk was sadly absent from the gallery.

Cathy Lomax & Alex Michon, 2022

Entrance to The Horror Show! at Somerset House 

The Horror Show!

Somerset House, London

27 October 2022 - 19 February 2023

 

Feelings For Fenella

Alex Michon visits an exhibition of paintings of the British actress Fenella Fielding and finds herself in a thoughtful frame of mind.

 

Contemplative – that was the curious feeling that overcame me when I visited Fenella Fielding: Actress, an exhibition of paintings at Gallery 286. Fielding, who is maybe best known for her role in Carry On Screaming! (1966), was also a serious actress with a deep husky voice and sensual demeanour. In the exhibition Fielding stares out at the viewer from a variety of portraits by the artists, Natalie Dowse, Sal Jones, Cathy Lomax, Jeanette Watkins and Fionn Wilson (who was also the show’s curator). Each of the artists had captured a different fascinating facet of Fenella in all her 1960s film star glamour. It was therefore disconcerting that I should feel contemplative. It was as if the paintings were thinking at me! Or perhaps it was that the actress was trying to reveal some unknown secret from her past through paint. 

Natalie Dowse, Do You Mind If I Smoke 1, 2021, oil on linen, 40x40cm

 

Natalie Dowse’s dreamy tight closeups are enigmatic and sort of sorrowful. I read in the show notes that Dowse played an audio copy of the Fielding’s book Do you Mind if I smoke? over and over again whilst she was painting. Ah and there it is! Dowse describes this as ‘a contemplative experience’. So perhaps I have inadvertently picked up on this at the show.

Sal Jones, Devastating Darling, 2021, oil on canvas, 60x50cm

Sal Jones writes that she had ‘wanted to paint (Fenella’s) voice’ – her presence, her humour and style.  In Devastating Darling she has used a montage of images of the actress infused with the glamour of 1960s fashion. The added text with its tongue in cheek humour captures the effervescent nature of Fenella as we would like to remember her, all high camp and knowing sexiness. However in amongst the glamour, Jones has included typical 1960s ‘hospital colours’ and as she writes ‘bed textiles’, as some of the images are taken from the film Doctor in Clover. I love the idea of ‘hospital colours’ and ‘bed textiles’ as they summon up all the slap and tickle, of the hospital Carry Ons which serve as incongruous signifiers of a heartfelt socialist dream of a fully funded idealistic Nation Health Service.

Cathy Lomax, Shadow, 2020, oil on linen 40x60cm

Cathy Lomax’s portraits are inspired by two inspirational visits to Fielding’s flat where Lomax was struck by the actress’s vast collection off wigs and makeup products particularly numerous boxes of false lashes. Lomax used the makeup as the starting point ‘layering images, just as makeup is layered on the face’. In Shadow, the fake eyelashes are particularly prominent, a flesh-coloured circle highlights the eye, an eyeshadow palette has become a searchlight on Fenella’s face. Her melancholic side gaze belying the performative made-up-ness of, as Lomax states, ‘actorly femininity’. Fenella does not look at us, instead she looks to the side, as if weary of masquerading. Here the actress looks as if she is longing to be in one of those Russian plays where everyone goes off to the country and is very bored! 

Jeanette Watkins, A Day With Cecil Beaton, Ready or Not, 2022, linen on cradled panel, 30x30cm

 

Jeanette Watkins has painted the actress from a society photograph taken by Cecil Beaton. Her Fenella is the least glamorous. Fenella peeps from behind the frame of her arms which are covering her head. The tones of the painting are muted and subtle and it seems to catch Fenella off guard, un-actressy. There is a touch Bloomsbury intelligentsia about the portrait and it perhaps hints at a more serious side.

Fionn Wilson, Fenella as Collette 1970, 2022, heavy body acrylic on canvas, 60x50cm

Fionn Wilson’s portraits are the most theatrical. Momentary vignettes that are powerful and dynamic. In one Fenella stares out from the painting wearing a black and white Pierrot-like spotty collar. She is holding an old-fashioned phone, her face is framed by her lustrous black hair, her thick black lashes circle her troubled eyes. The painting is like a silent mime, with Fenella as a trouble pierrette enacting a tragedy we can only imagine.

Alex Michon

 

 

Fenella Fielding: Actress 

Gallery 286, 286 Earl’s Court Rd, London SW5

9 November – 18 December 2022