{"id":1210,"date":"2020-09-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2021-11-01T07:52:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T07:52:24","slug":"i-subjects-and-we-objectselisabeth-pointons-where-to-from-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/?p=1210","title":{"rendered":"I subjects and we objects

Elisabeth Pointon\u2019s WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em><\/h3>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elisabeth Pointon sends me a video via Instagram. She has just received the central work for her new show, WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em>\u2014no question mark. On screen, a fan fills an enormous inflatable form the dusty black of tyres. The camera\/phone, presumably wielded by the artist, moves along the face of the work to reveal the expression \u2018BIG TIME.\u2019\u2014with full stop. The text puts me in mind of Microsoft WordArt. It\u2019s assertively 3D. Viewed from the side, the letters are sort of duplicated, in part, I guess, to help them stand up. They\u2019re ribbed like the panels of a puffer jacket or a stack of inner tubes. It\u2019s Michelin Man writing, only not white. The setting for the video shores up the automotive vibe. It\u2019s Pointon\u2019s everyday place of work, a car showroom. She is testing the inflatable out on a large mezzanine. What luck. Where else would she have found seven plus meters of carpet-softened floor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Elisabeth Pointon, BIG DEAL.<\/em>, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist and Jhana Millers, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s additional relevance to the showroom location, beyond its convenient scale. The place has had an outsized influence on Pointon\u2019s practice for some time. Her works, typically sculptural and text-based, have often chimed with dealership advertising devices, such as banners and blimps. BIG TIME.<\/em> is not a little reminiscent of a flailing tube man. The phrases Pointon favours\u2014\u2018BIG DEAL.\u2019, \u2018SPECTACULAR.\u2019, \u2018PHENOMENAL.\u2019\u2014are the ebullient language of sales floors. She tends not to recreate longer slogans, but keeps her expressions tight. Just one word, maybe two. In doing so, she allows the complexity of fairly minimal bits of language to be explored. \u2018Big deal\u2019 alone can yield a great deal of colour. It\u2019s a substantial sale under negotiation at a showroom or a high-end dealer gallery. It\u2019s a person who matters in The Culture. It\u2019s a verbal retort to hearing about something that doesn\u2019t matter to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pointon\u2019s preference is for terms that move through various domains or registers. \u2018Phenomenal\u2019 is colloquial but also has more specialist, and more \u2018sophisticated\u2019, senses. A dossier of information compiled by the artist while planning WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em> includes a break-down of the word and its root, \u2018phenomenon\u2019. One definition of \u2018phenomenon\u2019: \u2018A knowable thing or event\u2019. Another, classified as philosophical: \u2018An experienced object whose constitution reflects the order and conceptual structure imposed upon it by the human mind (especially by the powers of perception and understanding)\u2019. Which gets me wondering: Where do semantically complex terms turned into sensuous objects fit in? Are Pointon\u2019s works perhaps super-phenomenal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Elisabeth Pointon, BIG TIME.<\/em>, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist and Jhana Millers, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Opinion: one of the most beguiling aspects of Pointon\u2019s practice is the way in which it plays with the relationship between subjective experience and communication. It\u2019s a commonplace that words and works of art can be interpreted in diverse ways. Dictionaries list multiple senses, the artist can\u2019t control audience reactions, etc. Pointon embraces such slipperiness. At the same time, she retains a keen interest in the potential of collective understanding and action. Indeed, her works attest to these things to an uncommon extent, not least because they clearly depend on interpersonal interactions. They do not masquerade as entities of individual authorial genius. They involve facilitators and manufacturers (whom the artist consistently acknowledges). They invite engagement. We audience-members are summoned to read them, quite literally. They make sense. They appeal to us. Or, rather, they appeal to <\/span>me<\/em>. I really want to jump on the <\/span>BIG TIME.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s take a step back. The dossier I\u2019ve mentioned was handed to me at a meeting over drinks. Pointon brought along her flatmate and fellow artist Robbie Handcock, who has written lucidly on her work, and who collaborates with her on Glad We Did That<\/em>, a tongue-in-cheek \u2018vlog\u2019 series concerning \u2018all things art, culture and lifestyle in Wellington\u2019. I can\u2019t resist reading the meeting as a sort of private performance. Robbie as manager. Elisabeth as entrepreneur pitching her project to me. She refers to her orderly ring-bound book of emails and essays and plans. Details of special import have been highlighted or inscribed on lime green Post-it Notes. She\u2019s a little bit honour student\u2014stationery on point. She\u2019s a little bit organised office worker. She\u2019s a lot savvy art-maker. It suddenly occurs to me that Pointon is sizing me up as well. Where\u2019s my<\/em> preparation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Elisabeth Pointon, PHENOMENAL.<\/em>, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist and Jhana Millers, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Handcock is also present in order to act as a support person. Pointon has been shown at a number of large public institutions of late, including the Dowse Art Gallery in Te Awakairangi, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhet\u016b, and City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi. Her experiences have taught her to go into meetings with someone else in tow, someone who can help her assess the experience later on. A witness. Pointon is acutely conscious of being mucked about by galleries, as evidenced by the presence in the dossier of a printout of a 2019 essay by Anisha Sankar, which examines institutional gaslighting and the \u2018ghostly phenomenon\u2019 of white supremacy.[1]<\/a> In the past, Pointon has gone into meetings alone and come out feeling like she\u2019s not been heard or taken seriously. She\u2019s come out feeling like things are suss, but also feeling like the only one with that interpretation. It\u2019s unsettling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pointon is a woman. She is also queer and of Indian heritage. She enters situations with an acute awareness of systemic flaws. An important element of her work is \u2018institutional critique\u2019. She responds to the failings of big-deal galleries, gallerists, and curators in ways pointed and subtle. Her projects are often outlandishly grand. Recognising that artists like her are still shown relatively seldom by public institutions, she seizes opportunities to occupy the most space that she can. She pushes the limits of what an early-career artist might be expected to achieve. When she is not blowing up the phrase \u2018BIG TIME.\u2019, she\u2019s having a banner emblazoned with \u2018SPECTACULAR.\u2019 flown about the sky.[2]<\/a> She favours block capitals, clean typefaces, bold colours like black and red (Pointon notes that they relate to anarchism). She likes the punch and finality of a full stop. She loves making you look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Elisabeth Pointon, WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em>, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist and Jhana Millers, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

But she is also sensitive to the fact that, no matter what she does, she is at risk of being side-lined, or made into a token. From the outside, she is now a big-time artist. But being such an artist is not a straightforward experience. Things have been especially tough for Pointon of late, for reasons personal and global. Between climate catastrophe, the pandemic, and unending police brutality, 2020 has been a big time for us all. A lot to take in. A lot to take, period. At the same time, Pointon likes to imagine that the mess we\u2019re in could stimulate big change. Included in the dossier is a second, more recent essay by Sankar, which reflects on what it might mean to \u2018reclaim our agency in crisis\u2019.[3]<\/a> Pointon has taken a highlighter to the writer\u2019s observation that \u2018crisis\u2019 relates to a Greek term meaning \u2018to decide\u2019. So, decision time. Look around the gallery, choose your preferred exit sign. Statement or question, it\u2019s up to you. Or, rather, it\u2019s up to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay commissioned by Jhana Millers<\/a> to accompany the exhibition WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

WHERE TO FROM HERE<\/em><\/span>
Elisabeth Pointon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

10 September to 3 October 2020
Jhana Millers
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Anisha Sankar, \u2018Who\u2019s the Real Problem?: On White Supremacy and Institutional Gaslighting\u2019, Pantograph Punch<\/em>, 4 June 2019, https:\/\/www.pantograph-punch.com\/posts\/white-supremacy-institutional-gaslighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Robbie Handcock, \u2018WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT: In Conversation with Elisabeth Pointon\u2019, Hainamana<\/em>, 14 March 2019, https:\/\/www.hainamana.com\/would-you-look-at-that-in-conversation-with-elisabeth-pointon\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Anisha Sankar, \u2018Capitalism + Cyborgs: Imagining Change in Time of Crisis\u2019, Pantograph Punch<\/em>, 10 July 2020, https:\/\/www.pantograph-punch.com\/posts\/reflections-cyborg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elisabeth Pointon sends me a video via Instagram. She has just received the central work for her new show, WHERE TO FROM HERE\u2014no question mark. On screen, a fan fills an enormous inflatable form the dusty black of tyres. The camera\/phone, presumably wielded by the artist, moves along the face of the work to reveal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[209,208,192,210],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-elisabeth-pointon","tag-jhana-millers","tag-millers-obrien","tag-robbie-handcock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francismcwhannell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}