Angela BullochModern Art Oxford11 October – 18 DecemberAngela Bulloch’s newexhibition is rather likehow you might imaginesome cyberspace realitywhere technology hasreplaced humans. The plywood andmetal boxes, which form most ofthe work in the exhibition, are thesquadron of living creatures that,spread around the main gallery, emitunearthly pink, yellow and greenlight. The boxes fade and brightencontinuously as if engaging in Morsecode, unintelligible to the viewer.Bulloch’s earlier work RGBSpheres has a similar futuristic feel.You wander among huge bulbouslamps, implanted into the gallerywalls, to the accompaniment of a lowelectronic hum. The bubble-shapedlights, sweet-shop colours andmuffled sounds all mingle with thevacuous white space of the galleryto give Bulloch’s exhibition an eerilyunnatural character.The artist tells us that each boxrepresents a pixel, the smallest speckof colour on a television. In one ofBulloch’s works, Z-Point, the pixelboxes, forming a large vertical grid,display the explosion scene fromMichelangelo Antonioni’s 1970s filmZabriskie Point. However, the imagesof the explosion are slowed down andthe violence bleached out of the film:only the plaintive music and distantsound of a blast suggest the violencethat the film originally projected.Bulloch modifies the presentation ofscenes from various films to the pointwhere they are no longer recognisable,and she is trying to show the sterilityof modern society and its attemptsto order and sanitise reality. Withoutreading about the artist’s own ideas,however, you would strain to catchthese somewhat elusive meanings.The very least that can be said forBulloch’s exhibition is that it raisesquestions about what art really is,which something like Monet’s WaterLilies would never do. However,opinion of Bulloch’s work has not yetdrifted into orthodox art consensus.With an occasional belief in its ownprofundity, her work seems to bealone, out in orbit and talking onlyto itself. Bulloch’s exhibition seemsso dehumanised and so clinical that,despite its innovative approach, itwill no doubt have viewers like myselfcreeping back to Monet’s WaterLilies.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005
