Renee So's Take on Tobacco and Alcohol - the Delicious Fathers of Abiding Friendships and Fertil
“Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.”
These are the words invoked by the Latin Surrealist Luis Buñuel to describe a smoky, twilight world of frittered hours; a surreal landscape suggesting smoky cocktail hours and upturned moments of leisure. This has been replicated by Renee So in her latest exhibition. Buñuel could easily have been talking about the low and heady thrum of the nightlife, glistening in the rainy Shoreditch streets where Kate MacGarry gallery is hosting the artist’s third solo show.
Hong-Kong born Australian, So, has been based in London for a number of years and has exhibited all over the world - largely in the Southern hemisphere.
‘I've exhibited mainly in Australia and UK’, says So. ‘Melbourne is actually my home town and I consider London my home now too.
‘The experience [of showing work] is always different in different places’, she continues. ‘The viewer sees the work through their own perspective and with their own references, which are different to mine.’
Here in London, So draws on seemingly disparate yet similarly far flung influences for her latest collection of work. The self-conscious nonchalance of the French café society and the bourgeoisie meets the hyperreal technicolour of 60s billboards via the enigmatic mystery of the Middle East and the folksy fairytale craft of Germany.
‘Boots, beards, drinking, smoking and vessels are the motifs which run through all the works in the show’, explains So. The artist combines all these elements to create coquettish, posturing cocktail glasses and knitted murals of draped legs which recall Surrealism. While in a nod to the Pop Art of mid-20th century advertising, ceramic all-American cigarettes billow bubbling smoke that, in turn, echoes the spherical curls of ancient Assyrian beards seen on the faces of So’s inscrutable characters.
Working with ceramics and knitted tapestries, the tactility of So’s chosen media exquisitely renders the pieces and anchors them in the tangible world. This physicality lends a familiarity and a frame through which to observe and appreciate the appositely strange, dream-like logic under which the pieces appear to operate. There is an inherent tension in this juxtaposition of the physical and the abstract that So insists is purely incidental, claiming, ‘It’s just the way my subject matter is interpreted through the materials’.
So’s signature references to the 16th century German stoneware Bartmann, or Bellamine, jugs are also evident here. Ceramic heads are are both carefully crafted and contemplative. The facial details are not carved but are instead intentionally etched to mirror those features of the faces seen in her knitted murals; all of which bear indecipherable expressions. Almond-shaped eyes stare unflinchingly back as they follow the viewer around the room.
Together, these curious containers and mute tapestries construct notions of displacement, whimsy and imploding narrative that So says she hopes will give people a positive visual experience; an enjoyment that comes simply from looking.
Renne So’s Fertile Reveries works will be on exhibit at Kate MacGarry Gallery until April 16th, 2016.
Emily Bland
