Better late than never - ICA visit

Joseph Mazrimas
ICA Visit

Prior to this assignment, I had really wanted to visit the ICA – I had several friends, a couple of them practicing artists, say that it was definitely worthwhile. The piece that I was most interested in seeing – admittedly, in no small part for the novelty – was Louise Bourgeois’ The Spider. Something about an eleven-foot steel spider that struck me as something not to be missed. However, when I actually went and saw the piece – its value, for me, went well beyond novelty.
The first element of the piece which I found engaging was the way in which I was positioned; within the gallery itself, within the room, and the relationship between the two. The Spider is in a room separate from Bourgeois’ other pieces in the ICA. A large part of the effect of the piece is achieved through this; until you are more-or-less in the room, you can not see the spider. A logical path in to the room dictates that you get to the doorway in such a fashion as to have the spider about 90 degrees to one side. In this way, the sculpture “creeps” out at you, revealing, somewhat abruptly, its unexpected magnitude.
The Spider itself is extremely interesting visually. According to the panel in the room, Louise Bourgeois saw The Spider as analogous to her mother – protective, strong and, slightly more literally, a weaver. Upon closer examination, the work itself looks woven in a way. Its slender black appendages wrought with twists and bumps. Its body actually has a texture not unlike that of a ball of yarn. Moreover, standing underneath The Spider, one does feel somewhat protected – the creature’s legs stretched out around you, cage-like. These contrasting elements are what I think Bourgeois was trying to achieve.
The other piece which really struck me was Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson). This work is composed of burned wood (charcoal), wire mesh, wire, pins and nails. It takes the fragments of a woodworking shop, burned to the ground in a suspected case of arson, and suspends them from the ceiling in such a fashion that they resemble the fire that mutilated them. This piece impressed me, first, with the intricacy of its creation. However, was eventually drew me to it was how multidimensional it was. First, when viewed from one wall facing another, the piece appears stagnant (some research at the Mediatheque revealed that this is actually supposed to give the impression of a charcoal drawing, which it does very effectively). However, when you walk around it, its three-dimensional aspects give it the movement of fire – the effect is almost eerie.
In many ways, Hanging Fire is indicative of Cornelia Parker’s other work (according to the information in the Mediatheque) – it is based on the destruction of one object in to the creation of another. However, what separates this piece is that it was not the artist doing the destroying – that was done by some external person – it is in this way that I find the work most appealing. Not to sound too cynical – but given a grant and nothing else to do with my time, I could probably turn a record player in to a cleverly destroyed art work. However, in the case of these piece, the medium was already destroyed – what Cornelia Parker did was resurrect something that was, in many ways lost, and turned it in to something beautiful – something, in a theme keeping with those in her other work, indicative of the original object’s destruction.