Not An Old Master Then...

Installation Art? Bah humbug, says Peter Andrews

As personal, intimate garments are sliced into thin strips and more substantial costumes shredded Fiona Fortesque Robertson recalls her childhood passion for dressing and undressing dolls, how mother’s anger at expensive holes cut into adult clothes did not diminish or refute it, did not make pocket money spent on sweets magically reassign itself to haute couture outfits for Barbies or spring collections for Sindys, how her teenage years were punctuated by arguments over slashed jeans, bra tops of lycra surrounded space, stretched beyond design limits and shoes, socks, stockings, sneakers, slippers, stilettos and Doc Martens's that any normal human being would not be seen dead in; she remembers censorship at her school fashion show, how the head would not, could not understand how putting strategically placed petals on Paul and Patrick’s private parts related to going to San Francisco and wearing some flowers in your hair and was retro and ironic and cool; she recollects how at art college her tutor was concerned at figure studies consisting entirely of cross-dressing Greek Statues that were into failed designer labels bought cheaply at Matalan and photos of herself wearing decaying fish heads and Jammie Dodger biscuits and now, three years later, tomorrow will be hers, by these scraps of stuff she will live or die that day.

On the top floor of Melville Court in flat number one nine two, soft lights illuminate space, sounds of Moby’s ‘Go’ from his album ‘I Like to Score’ steadily beat and pause, repeat and pause, pause and pre-empt speech, whispering loudly with added white noise and extra sibilants from concealed speakers in ceilings whilst on virtual reality screens are pixelated representations of scissors, knives, razors, and shredding machines; fabric fills the floor, fills the flat, floats fatuously in fine filaments through the air; below is Fiona, waiting to be recovered, discovered, uncovered, recognised, regarded, remembered, but no one enters, for no one realises she has arrived.

Installation Art is always pretentious especially when you’ve lost the thread.

END

(c) Peter Andrews 2004/5

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com