Anselm Kiefer – Finnegans Wake [12.08.2023] @ White Cube

White Cube in Bermondsey is massive and still Anselm Kiefer managed to fill it to the rafters with this grand and at times claustrophobic exhibition. The main rooms contain giant paintings and installations: a mound of sand with ruined shopping carts and a wheelchair, concrete rubble surrounded by barbed wire. In the hall connecting the rooms stand high shelving units packed with a hoarders delight of junk: rusty metal double helixes, a pile of folding chairs, soiled clothing, bricks, dead sunflowers. Hand-scrolled passages from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake adorn most objects. It’s the hall that sets the tone – in this dream-like display we enter into the depths of a disturbed psyche, one fatigued by the ravages of war.

Pierre Bastien w/ Far Rainbow [15.08.2023] @ Cafe OTO

Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. Picture a giant tripod with various attachments, a table decorated with various gadgets, a projector aimed at the tripod and a screen on the wall behind. Enter an unassuming middle-aged man. He seems nervous, starts attaching items from the table onto the tripod. A rotating brush strikes a red string, creating a surprisingly forceful bass beat. He then picks up the trumpet and the magic begins. Experimental but rhythmic. Musical and visual art seamlessly combined. Not a word spoken during the entire performance. No need.

Frederick Wiseman – Meat (1976) [24.08.2023] @ Barbican

The final showing in the Barbican’s Eat the Screen series. The only other Wiseman film I’d seen was Titicus Follies (1967), a haunting depiction of everyday life at a mental asylum in Massachusetts. Meat, as the title suggests, documents the meat industry in Colorado, from grazing to packaging. Cows of different breeds, sizes, colours are rushed through a labyrinth of corrals into a slaughterhouse and killed with an electric bolt pistol to the head, their diversity of breed and size giving way to a uniformity of guts on a conveyor belt. Wiseman’s filming of sheep processing has a feeling of Baconian (no pun intended) religiosity to it – the bleating flock are executed on ground floor then lifted into the heavens on hooked chains to processing room above.

There is plenty in this film to interest the political economist, especially those interested in the turbulence of the 1970s. Salesmen fret about a recession-induced decline in meat consumption, labour representatives spar with management over work protocols, a contingent of camera-happy businessmen from (then rising) Japan take a tour of the plant to learn about the ins-and-outs of the American meat business.

Stephen Wright – House of Dreams [26.08.2023]

I’ve been meaning to check this out for years. Little did I know that the artist and his husband Michael would be running the show, the former giving a brief introduction to the house, and the latter there to answer any questions and engage with the visitors. How to describe the house and its multitude of sculptures, mosaics, texts? Busy, colourful, mesmerizing. Beer caps, bleach bottles, toys, dolls, black and white photos, plates, cups, Indian gods and gurus. Meeting Wright halfway through the house, he asked what we thought of it. My immediate reaction was to say something along these lines: “I feel like I’ve taken a journey deep into my unconscious mind”. With unpretentious Northern charm, Wright responded: “Well I hope you’re having a good time”.

After a visit to the garden with its sculptures and towering oak, we again met Wright back in the house. He had taken time to warmly interact with every guest. Our case it was no different. Wright mentioned that the house had served as a kind of therapy after a difficult period in the 1990s when he lost his first husband and both his parents in quick succession. It’s a collection of one person’s dreams, traumas – it takes an incredible amount of courage to create something like this, even more courage to stand ready to discuss it with a constant stream of strangers. He mentioned that he never wanted kids and that the house was his baby. And what a baby it is.