reviews graham hudson
Graham
hudson
simon Lee, London rokeby, London
29 august – 29 septem ber 28 august – 2 oCtober
There’s a deliciously English sensibility to Graham
Hudson’s sculptures. Architectural fantasies in
plastic, metal and MDF, they capture an aesthetic
of controlled chaos that’s entirely absent from the
utopian gestures and clean lines of Modernism
– always more of a Continental obsession. Closer to
Heath Robinson or Gothic Revival than Le Corbusier,
his whimsical, topsy-turvy work celebrates a spirit of
amateurism, of rag-and-bone and of ‘Make do and
mend’.
Throughout August Hudson was hunkered
down in Rokeby creating a kind of grotto called This
Sculpture Is 18 Metres Long (2007). Like the product
of his 2006 residency at Chelsea College of Art, this is
a ramshackle pseudobuilding, but unlike that project,
the focus is on the interior: a room within a room, it
has no facade. Instead the facade of the gallery itself
has been altered, its window filled with cardboard
boxes, blocking out the light and carrying a symbolic
message; they’re objects that are ready to be thrown
away, Hudson’s preferred medium. All sorts of junk
go into the construction of This Sculpture Is 18 Metres
Long, a tunnel filled with a series of kinetic and not-so-
kinetic sculptures, an elongated cabinet of curiosities.
It resembles an inorganic alimentary canal, devouring
visitors and expelling them into bare space at the
other end, bemused and disorientated.
But it’s tremendous fun. Climb through the
crazy ogee of an opening and you find yourself in an
altered reality. Everyday objects like bin bags, rolls
of tape, stepladders and moulded polystyrene are
re-engineered in unexpected ways. Hudson makes
much of the use of light. It shines from every nook,
from behind translucent cardboard packaging or
underneath a nest of nails. In the centre of the sculpture are four black plastic bags billowing in the wind from electric fans
This Sculpture Is 18
Metres Long, 2007
and pulsating with light from the bulbs within them. These organ-like structures enhance the feeling that you’re inside some
(installation view).
Courtesy rokeby, London
strange animal, a monster that feeds on detritus, a future parasite that has evolved to mop up the phenomenal amounts of
waste we produce.
Suffusing everything is a drone, a half-musical noise produced by two record players that spin endlessly, their needles
stuck in hand-gouged grooves. There’s a click, click, click as well. This is the sound of a dangling lightbulb hitting the edge of
the record, being pushed round in a circle and hitting the edge again, casting an ever-moving shadow. In an ingenious turn
Hudson has created a perpetual motion machine that functions in three dimensions – sound, light and movement – and with
nothing more sophisticated than a few pieces of household rubbish.
This Sculpture Is 18 Metres Long is a product of the artist’s delight in the mix of collecting, creativity, wit, haphazardness.
Though it comes across as unsystematic, it isn’t devoid of meaning. Just the opposite – Hudson shows us the huge potential
for meaning that resides in the things we throw away. His act of recycling and reconfiguring this urban debris draws attention
to the absurdity – not of his creations, but of our own indifference to the unexhausted potential of the things we make
redundant. David Shariatmadari
197 artreview
November_REVIEWS.indd 197 26/9/07 13:34:16
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