review

candice breitz at the white cube in hoxton square.

there are 3 video installations in the show - two of them form part of the work called mother + father. breitz has taken 6 iconic movie parental clashes, digitally edited them so that only the mother or father appear on the screen, the backgrounds turned to black so that the character's dialogue and actions appear out of context of the original movie, but a new relationship is created when the edited versions are played next to the other screens. one side is the mothers, the other is for the fathers. both have six screens. the excerpts from the films are played in no particular order, they are jump cut, repeated, faded out, faded in but the talking heads are played in such away that they are talking to each other rather than the other people in the film. so at first listen the mother's seemed to be talking to each other about the problems of being mothers and of being daughters. while the fathers seemed to be imparting the wisdom of being parents. it is a peculiar viewing experience as the actors are removed from the role they are playing and so you can concentrate on their raw emotions (julia roberts comes out badly on this...). and then you can concentrate on what they are saying. the mixing and editing make it something you can watch several times and get different relationships out of it each time.

as good as that was queen (a portrait of madonna) is simply to die for.
it answers (the never asked question) of what do you get if you cross karaoke with pop idols and mix it with an idea stolen from gillian wearing.
basically you have 30 screens showing 30 heads all singing unaccompanied (they have headphones on so that they hear the music - we just get the voice) to the songs of madonna. the 30 voices combine surprisingly and do not sound too bad. but the joy of this comes from the fact that we are seeing these hopefuls mug it up for the camera, each person is filmed individually, each filmed just as a headshot. and some of them really do go for it in a major way. there are at least two singers there who have decent voices (you know that this is the closest they will come to being famous) and there are too many people who really do think that they are stars in the making while we all know that they are no more than deluded idiots.

it is mesmerising, it is funny, it is something that needs to be watched.
not sure it qualifies as art, but it could well be the format of a series of 3-5 minute tv shows.....

i will be going to this show again.
i urge you to go.