‘... and There Will Be Time’

A Review of ‘Time Waits for No-one’ at the arc Gallery

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound, ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1913) 
(Above Image: Mary Osinibi, Rush Hour, 2010)

For much of the twentieth century, photography has been positioned as the black sheep of the art world: the less-talented cousin of painting, sculpture and installation art. Indeed, ever since the invention of early forms of photography in the mid-nineteenth century there has always been a stigma attached to the art form. Most famously perhaps, the French poet, philosopher and art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) despised photography, seeing it as merely product of capitalism and industry. It was his contention that photography provided an impression of reality that did not have the 'spiritual momentum' which is the product of a genuinely artistic imagination. Whilst reviewing a photographic exhibition in 1859, he commented that:

‘[Photography’s] true duty is to be the servant of the sciences and arts - but the very humble servant [...] But if it is allowed to encroach upon the domain of the [...] imaginary, upon anything whose value depends solely upon the addition of something of a man's soul, then it will be so much the worse for us’

Thankfully, in the early-twenty first century things have progressed somewhat and, indeed, the evening of Thursday 15th July 2010 saw the private viewing of arc’s first solely photographic exhibition of the year: ‘Time Wait’s for No-one’, a recent body of work by the London-based photographer Mary Osinibi. Indeed, one of the most frequent comments given to me at the viewing was just how great it was to see an exhibition celebrating what was a previously marginalised art form.

Ade Omolaja, a fellow photographer, explained to me that, for him, there were two ways of looking at the images on display, and whilst both ways of seeing informed each other, they were nevertheless different. The first ‘pull’ of each photo is quite simply its appeal as an image – its subject, its composition, its colours, and so on – but that it subsequently has a second ‘pull’ which is its appeal as a work of photography. Indeed, the mechanics of Osinibi’s work are quite interesting, as her images look as if they have been manipulated using imaging software on a computer, but in fact they have most assuredly not been. Instead, their striking effects were created simply though physical movement and experiments with shutter speeds and by deliberate under and over-exposure. Furthermore, the final images can actually be quite deceptive in terms of the way in they have been created. For instance, in a piece such as Run, in which it looks as if the photograph has been taken with one of the two central figures moving briskly, in actual fact, as the artist herself detailed to me, it was shot with the figure moving in slow motion. Ultimately, this time-consuming artistic process certainly undermines Baudelaire’s notion of photography as merely an act of recoding what we see rather than creating what we see.

Run

The work in this collection is centred on the theme of time and its passage, and, as one viewer commented to be, this can be interpreted either positively or negatively ‘depending on where you are personally in the time landscape’. However, not everyone was convinced by the works on display as a body of work in itself. Photographer Chris Coekin commented that, although it is great that Osinibi, ‘doesn’t compromise on what makes her work visually interesting’, there is a visual disparateness about the works on display, making it difficult to identify this as a single collection, which is precisely what it has been advertised as. That, unlike past exhibitions at arc, such as ‘Elegant Urban Decay’ or ‘Much Strings Attached’, the connections between the pieces on display, both aesthetic and thematic, are not as ‘tight’. This observation, I feel, is both a fair and interesting point. However, several counterarguments also spring to mind.  Firstly, this loss of cohesion could simply be due to the fact that it is a photographic exhibition, and so it is just simply harder for the viewer to identify those idiosyncratic artistic techniques that mark the work as belonging to that particular artist – Nyemike Onwuka’s burnishing of his canvases, Jean Joseph’s purposefully two-dimensional and featureless figures, Uchay Joel Chima’s lacelike interweaving. Secondly, with all pieces in some way related to the notion of the passage of time, it is arguable that of all the exhibitions held at arc thus far this year, Osinibi has set herself the most abstract, complicated and ambitious thematic framework to work within. Thus, it is not surprising that this theme has inevitably produced such heterogeneous and contrasting pieces, because time itself is so radically heterogeneous, even towards itself.  

Indeed, for me, the exhibition’s overarching thematic concerns are most succinctly manifested in Osinibi’s attempts to create/capture the fleeting, the ephemeral and the transitory. Jean Joseph has noted Osinibi’s preoccupation with the horror movie genre and, I would contend, that these two interests come to a head in a piece such as Green Dress which depicts a young woman in a green dress as she turns her head around to face the camera whilst climbing a degraded looking flight of outdoor stairs in the light of a streetlamp. There is an incredible sense of danger evoked by the piece, predominantly due to the fact that the narrative possibility opened up by the image is what precisely will happen to the woman when she reaches the top of the stair? Which one of the various and increasing dangers of modern urban life awaits for her just beyond our field of vision (which has itself been disempoweringly limited by the walls that line the stair)?

Green Dress

One of the pieces that was most commented upon at the private viewing was Grey Eyes, which is a portrait of the late tap-dancer Jimmy Clark, one half of the Clark Brothers. This is a thought provoking and contemplative image in which Osinibi has used the unobtrusive serenity of the camera lens in order to let Jimmy’s personality come through. However, bearing no trace of her characteristic shutter speed experiments, it is not quite as easy to immediately identify how this particular pieces functions within the collection as a whole. Thus, the reason for its inclusion, I would suggest, resides in the idea of the human face as a calendar of time: that the passage of time is suggested in his wrinkles, his white hairs, the hazy expression in his eyes, and so on. Thus, as a viewer, the image provokes questions such as: how old is this man? What has he seen? What has he experienced in his life? Indeed, connections between eyes, sight, and time pervade several of the works in the exhibition. For example, hung just to the right of Grey Eyes is At Odds, in which, as artist Edward Ofosu pointed out to me, caught in the process of turning her head from left to right, her direction of her own eyes is cleverly matched by the direction of the eye of the peacock feather of her patterned blouse. 

Grey Eyes

I was also able to speak with Alicia, future sister-in-law of the artist, and, funnily enough, the model who appears as the shadowy figure in two of the larger pieces, Yellow Jeans and Give out Light. These pieces were shot in a real derelict mansion in Mill Hill, North London, and Alicia recounted to me Osinibi’s instance of utilising particularly atmospheric buildings in her work. Alicia is more noticeably visible in Give out Light where she poses demurely in a kitchen doorway, veiled behind what appears to a sinister wraith of smoke. Alicia also told me of her anticipation of seeing the final image, as, being on the other side of the camera, she naturally had no idea as to what the final image would turn out like. Indeed, what she found particularly shocking about seeing the image for the first time was the dissociation she experienced. In other words, that there was a breakdown of recognition which resulted in a difficulty in accepting the human image presented to her as her own. She also pointed out that, much like I have previously discussed using the example of Run, how misleading the final image can be in terms of the way in which it was produced. In this case, although the warmly-toned image appears to show what looks like the reflection of flames to the left of the door frame (the suggestion is, I believe, that the figure in the smoke may be the ghost of somebody who lost their life in a house fire), in actual fact these photographs were shot in freezing conditions: the derelict property, of course, not having a working heating system.

As fascinating as this photo is, however, my personal favourite of the entire show is its partner image, Yellow Jeans. Perhaps my penchant for this particular image is in some sense related to my interest in architecture, particularly the darker and more sinister aspects and resonances suggested by built environments. Indeed, of all the images in the collection, Yellow Jeans most directly articulates the effect of the passage of time on architectural structures. Depicting part of a room with its doorframe and carpet removed, dots of neglected blue-tack covering the wall and patches of missing plaster, here Osinibi has utilised the intrinsic visual grammar of the ruined object in order to conjure overtones of death and its transgression. Indeed, the wreckage of physical substances spotlighted by the image most definitely suggests a malevolent passage of time: that time is, in some sense, the agent of death and thus never on your side. 

Christopher Yiannitsaros

arc Research Officer

To view the brochure for this exhibition, please click here.

To view the promotional video for this exhibition, please click here.