Elliot Watson and the visual artist discuss prepping for an uncertain future, as we present Bowman’s special edit of a new animation
“Well, what’s your plan for the apocalypse?”
If it’s possible to ask a question playfully and seriously, then Margot Bowman has managed it. I leap into a hackneyed response – I’d scrap for the last of the canned goods in a deserted supermarket, huddle around an oil drum wearing fingerless gloves, inhaling the thick smoke from imperfect fuel, muttering and spitting. I’d no doubt be consumed by bitterness and misanthropy. It’s hard to envisage a post-apocalyptic world without an acknowledging and sorry nod towards Cormac McCarthy or Philip K. Dick.
If life is to imitate art and the novels and films of today are valid descriptions of the future then we are surely bound for a dystopian wasteland; knots of scrap metal will out-value fine art, charred and burnt out doorways will represent home, xenophobia and violence will prevail.
Conveniently cinematic though these images may be, they show little faith in human spirit and generosity. It’s a cliché that Margot intends to challenge with her latest installation WET, to be unveiled at The House of St Barnabas, Soho, this week as part of Art Social ’14. “I didn’t want to say the future is going to be shit; maybe it’s going to be amazing. If you’ve got good friends, it could be awesome. Dystopia is a trope. Let’s see if there are more options.”
The piece is comprised of several parts, including an animation and electronic music provided by producers Actress and Giganta.The animation is a revival of Bowman’s character Louise from her St. Martin’s graduation project Everything is so Amazing. In Everything is so Amazing, Louise finds herself emotionally impotent, blithely tumbling from marriage to marriage with her face held in a rictus grin by a grim ‘Smile-u-lator’. Three years ago it was a pertinent and early comment on the use of social media as a sole means of emotional expression, a conversation that is now very much part of the mainstream.[/one_half]
This time, Margot forces her audience to confront issues that have been neatly filed in a drawer marked denial – global warming, post-oil existence and a rapidly and uncontrollably changing landscape. As water levels rise around Louise, speakers produce a futuristic sound that is part ticking clock, part dripping tap. An eerie, aqueous voice asks questions of the future: “Should childhood be spent on rotation between different communities?”, “Is it time to return to natural selection?”, “How do we get lost?”, “How will we travel?” and “Should death have an opt-out clause?”.
Margot hopes the show will elicit genuine and varied responses to the idea of creating a brand new society in a post-oil water-world. “I don’t want to be presumptuous about the way people feel about these issues. I just want people to be open and stimulated and then to see what happens. Using beauty and narrative to help people interface with something they often avoid – that interaction is art in itself.”
In their new summer programme, House of St Barnabas is exhibiting an artist whose outlook mirrors the charity’s careful and guided optimism for the future. The charity offer support and opportunity to London residents who’ve experienced homelessness and addiction on the capital’s unforgiving streets. It would be fitting then if her audience could find a brighter vision of the future for themselves in the House of St. Barnabas themselves.
Art Social ’14 at The House of St Barnabas, 1 Greek Street, London, runs 31 July – 3 August. Tickets Available HERE
