Oblique and Open Saw the Martin Parr exhibition…
Oblique and Open
Saw the Martin Parr exhibition at the Barbican recently, a great trawl through his work of the last 30 years. Parr is up there with the likes of Alan Bennett and, er, Morrissey for depicting the idiosyncracies of Britain at its most dismal - at least, on the surface. Kids playing in squalor, British shoppers fighting over crates of cheap booze in French hypermarches, rural towns decaying - it's like a 2D version of Mike Leigh's films. But Parr's photos, whilst knowingly kitsch, aren't arch or ironic or contemptuous of their subjects - he's interested in catching life as it is rather than a glossy media portrayal of a life that doesn't exist, a worthwhile antidote to the Mario Testino exhibition also on in London at the moment.
My favourite piece at the exhibition is Parr's huge collage of laser-printed photos in lurid technicolour depicting everything from a full fried breakfast to a box of dildos. It makes for distinctly queasy viewing with the colours of each photo meshing into one big shock to the retina, an overload of overripe images. Apparently Parr deliberately made the piece using laser copies so it was cheap enough to display in several galleries simulaneously, which is a great DIY tip.
I think what I liked most of all was the simple openness of Parr's photography - no obliqueness, no pseudo-intellectual posturing, no lengthy conceptual explanations trying to hide a fundamental emptiness. There's little beauty in Parr's photos but they're full of life, where his skill in framing the subject disappears becauses he does it so well. Phaidon have produced a whacking great catalogue to go with the exhibition, and it's worth checking out the more affordably priced Boring Postcards collections (British, American and German!) - perfect books for browsing in the loo. And there's Parr's own website too.
The Parr exhibition is in marked contrast to its sister exhibition, Transition: The London Art Scene In The Fifties which is a lot more hard work - there's a couple of Francis Bacon paintings included but I found it hard to focus beyond that. Obviously my art needs had already been appeased by the Parr Big Mac previously.
