Michael Wilkinson ‘Never Works’

Installation view, 'Never Works', Le Temple, Paris, 2011
Michael Wilkinson
Le Temple, Paris
17/10/2011—23/10/2011
  • Installation view, 'Never Works', Le Temple, Paris, 2011
  • Installation view, 'Never Works', Le Temple, Paris, 2011
  • Michael Wilkinson, Logic Revolts, 2010, Blackboard, Scritti Politti single, strings, grey board, copper, WWII army webbing, chalk, honey, honeycomb, glass, newspaper cutting (Paris May 1968), image of Liverpool 1944, verdigris, 102.5 x 69.5 x 23.5 cm
  • Michael Wilkinson, Dans la Nuit, 2010, Cotton, wood, string, printed badge, cutting from Paris Match 1968, 40 x 40 cm
  • Michael Wilkinson, Vitrine 2, 2011, Vitrine: Painted plywood,'v' tongue and groove panelling, glass, glazier's putty, powder-coated steel objects, Rucksack, honeycomb, dutch greyboard, cutting showing dead Communards, oak, acorn, two copies of Lotta Continua, wool felt, compass, escape axe, Technics slipmat, digital print showing interior of Seditionaries detail, bee, aluminium ladder foot, 193.5 x 232 x 65 cm, Installation view, 'Never Works', Le Temple, Paris, 2011
  • Michael Wilkinson, Vitrine 2, 2011, Vitrine: Painted plywood,'v' tongue and groove panelling, glass, glazier's putty, powder-coated steel objects, Rucksack, honeycomb, dutch greyboard, cutting showing dead Communards, oak, acorn, two copies of Lotta Continua, wool felt, compass, escape axe, Technics slipmat, digital print showing interior of Seditionaries detail, bee, aluminium ladder foot, 193.5 x 232 x 65 cm
  • Michael Wilkinson, Like Trousers, 2011, Etched mirror mounted on perspex, verdigris in beeswax, cellophane card and image from Guy Debord's Panegyric.(Left), Linen, acrylic, verdigris, oil, blackboard paint, bulldog clip, image from Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces (Right), Two parts, 90 x 70 cm each
  • Michael Wilkinson, (b) WOOD BEEZ, 2011, Etched mirror, wooden frame, linen, oil, blackboard paint, painted badge, ferrule, cardboard, cellophane, two inch audio tape, and cutting from Panegyric by Guy Debord showing 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' graffiti. (Left), Acrylic on canvas, oil, beeswax, ink, thread, oak, card, leather, newspaper cutting, pine dowel with verdigris in beeswax, painted badge. (Right), 161 x 140 x 4cm (left); 163 x 145 x 5.5cm (right)
  • Michael Wilkinson, (b) WOOD BEEZ, 2011, Etched mirror, wooden frame, linen, oil, blackboard paint, painted badge, ferrule, cardboard, cellophane, two inch audio tape, and cutting from Panegyric by Guy Debord showing 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' graffiti. (Left), Acrylic on canvas, oil, beeswax, ink, thread, oak, card, leather, newspaper cutting, pine dowel with verdigris in beeswax, painted badge. (Right), 161 x 140 x 4cm (left); 163 x 145 x 5.5cm (right)

A collection of new canvasses, etched mirrors and sculptural pieces organized around the artist’s on-going interest in reversals, inversions and counter-revolutions.

The title of the exhibition is a play on Guy Debord’s famous Ne travaillez Jamais graffiti of 1953, inverted reproductions of which feature throughout the work. Debord also provides an oblique starting point for the mountaineering image that accompanies the show; the cover of Christopher Gray’s book Leaving the 20th Century, which shows a climber crossing a precarious ice bridge juxtaposed with the quote, “We are only concerned with the moments when life shatters the glaciation of survival.”

The mountaineering motif continues in the contents of a vitrine on display in the show — a Karrimor rucksack and felt bed roll — as well as in a ‘red sculpture’ consisting of a Robin Day chair, a mountaineering jacket and an Olivetti Valentine typewriter.

The show also includes the latest in a series of hanging tape pieces inspired by the Taliban practise of confiscating pop tapes and unspooling them in trees. The tapes used here are the studio soundtrack to Highway, a religious program shown on television in the UK during the 1980s.