Journal, ICA - exhibition review
This is a show about the personal as political — the journal as an intimate record of events and a form of current-affairs reportage. Much of the work in the show is both.
Cyprien Gaillard’s video Artefacts (2011) is shot casually on an iPhone, though converted to film in the gallery, and is a meditation on ancient Babylon (a maddeningly looped soundtrack features a sequence from David Gray’s song of the same name).
It captures the ruins of post-war Iraq, alongside images of Iraqi antiquities, prompting us to contemplate the country’s grim present in the light of its past. It’s a coincidence that it’s shown amid Iraq’s renewed crisis.
LA-based Japanese artist Koki Tanaka’s video, meanwhile, reflects on a recent London trauma — he interviews three Londoners who were caught up in the 2011 riots and films them recreating their movements through the city. The contrast of their descriptions of those events with the calm film, shot on a benign sunny day, of them walking on the same streets, creates a profound sense of uneasiness.
Journal is a kind of test site — a laboratory of contemporary ideas. It seems to me that this is exactly what the ICA should be.
Until September 7 (020 7930 3647, journal.ica.org.uk)
