THE GLUE FACTORY, GSA MFA DEGREE SHOW, GLASGOW

JAMIE CREWE:WIVES AND SODOMY

May 2015 — June 2015.

 

Wives and sodomy describes a body of work by Jamie Crewe, displayed at The Glue Factory at Glasgow School of Art, as part of the GSA MFA Degree Show, 2015. 

Alcibiades and Socrates are two interchangeable paintings, in spray paint on wood panels. They both, in rough terms, illustrate a painting described in Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal, an anonymous pornographic novel published in 1893. The character Briancourt, when explaining his new painting of Jesus, John, and ‘one of the many adulterous Marys’ to the lovers Camille and Teleny, declares: “[...] to render my idea clearer, I’ll paint a pendant to it: ‘Socrates — the Greek Christ, with Alcibiades, his favourite disciple.’ The woman will be Xantippe.” The paintings were mounted on steel frames modelled after a sacrificial post that features in Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Medea (1969). 

Medea sat between Alcibiades and Socrates. It is a palette of firewood on which are placed two stacks of A3 sized double-sided risograph prints. One stack is printed in red, and the other is printed in blue; each stack has its own collection of drawings and handwritten notes on one side, and on the other side a list of the works which surround it. The drawings and handwritten notes skitter among the themes of the work: a sword makes a snake a rollmop; knives dig into the word ‘SON’; Carla Lonzi’s Vai pure (1980) is quoted; a woman joyously embraces a bundle of twigs; Lot’s wife looks back to Sodom, like a voyeur. 

Xantippe is an electric fan which blew across the other assembled works, and is a personification of Socrates' wife. It aimed at Medea, fanning flammability, and made the channel between Alcibiades and Socrates difficult to stay in, if it was a cold day. 

Teleny is a video which was shown on a monitor strapped to the back of Alcibiades or Socrates. It is a partial adaptation of Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal. Scenes of dialogue between the characters Briancourt, Camille and Teleny are staged, acted by an amateur cast, scripts in hand, against a set dressed with cheap flowers and green drapery. Through chroma keying these green spaces are removed, revealing scenes from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969) underneath. The video is a cesspool playground: scraps of footage leap in and out, layers accruing or evaporating; hands shred flowers, subtitles disappear, a hair-wreathed soap hovers over Maria Callas, and Erik Satie’s composition  Socrate (1919) is reduced (like stock) to John Cage’s composition Cheap Imitation (1969; composed for the Merce Cunnigham Dance Company to the rhythms of Satie’s Socrate when the performance rights for the latter were denied).