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Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard: Walking Over, and After, Acconci

There is no shortage of in-jokes or wink-and-nod reference points in current contemporary artmaking. You might even call it a resurgent trend with more and more artists taking footnote cues, outright and implied, from the seminal artworks, pivotal theoretical positions and watershed cultural moments of decades past. But there is a fine line between being reverent and being derivative, which can make this backward-glancing strategy a dangerously cloying one for artists. If well done, tapping into cultural and historical touchstones offers fresh perspective and can even add a pointedly ironic edge to new work. If overstated or too abstract, a nod to the past can easily become a distracting non sequitur.

Happily, British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, whose work is currently featured at Lawrence Eng in Vancouver, fall into the former camp.

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches) 2005  Production still

For more than a decade, Forsyth and Pollard have tested the resonant power of the past in video works and monumental live performances that mine the precedents of pop culture and contemporary art history, often to bitingly humourous effect. So it's especially interesting to see their work in a Vancouver context considering the similarly implicit tactics of local artists like Rodney Graham, Tim Lee, Damian Moppett and Geoffrey Farmer.

Take Forsyth and Pollard's Kiss My Nauman for instance. Riffing off a key late-1960s performance/film installation by Bruce Nauman which features Nauman methodically covering himself in successive layers of white, pink, green and black makeup, Forsyth and Pollard film members of the longest-running Kiss tribute band as they scrupulously apply stage makeup in what the duo calls a “compelling combination of reconstruction and revision.” The result is a telling break down of art-world iconography and the questionable devotion of vicarious celebrity homage, both to art stars and rock stars.

Another video in the exhibition, Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches), looks back to a 1973 performance by Vito Acconci in which he confronts the viewer in a pacing rant directed to a spurned lover. For their remake version, Forsyth and Pollard invite a hip-hop rapper to reinterpret the Acconci original and in doing so manage to draw sharp parallels between Acconci’s one-sided misogynistic challenge and the aggressive, in-your-face posturing of contemporary youth culture: this is high art through the lens of MTV.

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard  Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches) 2005  Production still

In the interest of fairness, perhaps, Forsyth and Pollard’s latest work, Walking Over Acconci (Misdirected Reproaches), adds a further layer to the Acconci referencing. Staged similarly to Walking After Acconci, this time it’s a female rapper who delivers the knockout blow to an ex-lover. The work brings all of the art and social references full circle, evening the score and once more repositioning perspective. (1531 W 4 Ave, Vancouver BC)

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard  Walking Over Acconci (Misdirected Reproaches) 2008  Production still

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