Inside the zombie mind

By Rhonda Dredge

At Buxton Contemporary’s last show all of the exhibits were screen-based and they must have got a good response.

You walked from one dark room to the next but the trick was staying put.

It was a bit depressing after COVID to be stuck inside with a screen.

“At first I was resistant,” one visitor said, who bravely passed the test. “One video went for two hours.”

She stayed until the bitter end, however, and it was worth it, she said, without giving too much away.

In the current show which started in April the exhibits are also screen-based or iterations of work posted on the gallery’s website.

Down the road at Margaret Lawrence Gallery the story is the same, an exhibition of screen shots and footage of a PhD student’s actual work.

Is the art world slower to emerge from the lockdown than other industries or has the zombie effect overtaken its usual attachment to the material world to such an extent that mind games are far more important than we previously thought?

“I was afraid of being left behind,” the former video sceptic admitted when asked about her change of heart.

Is that a feature of the art of being a zombie – the ability to come up with excuses for sitting on your butt glued to the clever images of others or are these videos so convincing they have the art community mesmerised?

If you, too, like clicking on a “meet the artist” sign on a website and being shunted to Youtube, you might have gone over to the dark side as well and have forgotten about actual flesh and blood.

What about making art in the real world with objects and form and materials, the lovely elements that make up the periodic table?

Luckily the Buxton show has a form of redemption in the shape of small hand-crafted sea-going vessels.

The work by PNG artist Taloi Havini is a pleasure to observe, an exhibit, sadly presented as belonging in the simulated store-room of a museum. What’s going on?

Apparently, the first part of her install was a video but she insisted upon showing actual objects in part two.

Good on her. Conceptual work might be the ruling narrative here but at least she managed to include some hand-made objects within it.

Zombies might actually enjoy the exercise of moving between the display cabinets to view artefacts of a sea-going people who liked the feel of the wind in their faces as they hauled their cargoes to and fro.

That simulated memory will then be relegated to the dark recesses of the zombie mind as it settles after a little flutter with reality.

This Brittle Light, Buxton Contemporary, until June •