The Age of Love, Heather Phillipson
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Review by Ben Stroughton
19th October 2018 - 24th March 2019
Produced as a major new commission that responds to BALTIC’s vast Level 4 gallery, Heather Phillipson presents a series of videos, sounds and objects that operate as landmarks in a remixed geology. The sounds and videos are not quite what you would expect in a art exhibition, usually they are quiet and relaxed but not in this exhibition, the music is all you can hear throughout the entire building. She took into account that surely when you are in an art gallery you have a speak so quiet it is at the point of whispering but, you actually have to basically shout at one another so you are able to have a single clue on what the other person is saying. It has been assumed that all artists have ‘rules’ that they are supposed to follow in order to become a successful artist, but that is not true because Heather Phillipson did the complete opposite of the ‘rules’ and she is a large, high calibre artist with a high amount of success.
The concept for the exhibition is my own opinion is really quite simple, she wanted to make us feel like an animal, the loud seagull noise, the fence which is around the exhibition was originally used as a cow pen, but now it has been transition over to make us feel like we are being trapped, another aspect that she wanted to embody in this exhibition was related to the giant cat, it has been said that when a human stares at an animal the animals seem to cower in fear, but there isn’t the same impact the other way around. The giant cat is mean to feel like when you lock eyes with it, it is following you around the space making you feel uncomfortable and making yourself cower in fear due to your own paranoia.
In my own personal opinion I believe that this was a high quality exhibition the reasoning for this is because of what I had just say before, it is extending beyond the beliefs of what people think an art exhibition is and using different aspects in order to achieve the goal.
By Ben Stroughton
