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| Stuart Whipps, "The Kipper and the Corpse" (2015), installed at BAS8, Leeds Art Gallery |
Stuart Whipps has
come onto my radar via his piece in the British Art Show 8 (BAS8), “The Kipper
and the Corpse” (Leeds Art Gallery (2), 2015). It is the carcass of a mini
built by British Leyland in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher came to power and
the year Whipps was born. Whipps’s work explores the “slippery relationship
between memory and truth” (Leeds Art Gallery (1), 2015) and as such I feel it
relates to some of the work I’ve done on de-industrialisation – pulling from my
own memories. I had quite a strong emotional reaction to this piece; it
reminded me of what my family went through with the de-industrialisation of
Leeds. There was a sense of emptiness, starting into the shell of the car…
where had it travelled to? What had gone on inside it? Who owned it? A stark
monument to the Thatcherite chapter of our collective history. Whipps intends
to restore the Mini with the help of ex-Longbridge employees as BAS8 tours over
the next year.
The piece is the
third part of a series of works which investigate the demise of the Longbridge
motor works in Birmingham. For the first part, Whipps photographed the plant
between 2005 and 2008, and also travelled to Nanjing in China to photograph the
motor company that had bought the property rights from MG Rover. (Colin &
Yee, 2015, p 120)/
The second chapter
was exhibited at the “East International” exhibition in Norwich in 2009. This
included photographs of the recently closed plant and archival documents
including “text pieces that use the cumulative word counts for all of Margaret
Thatcher’s Speeches, Interviews and Other Statements between her election in
May 79, and the sacking of Derrick (Red Robbo) Robinson at British Leyland in
November 1979. They are presented by the categorisation method utilized by the
Margaret Thatcher archive”. (Whipps. S.,(1) n.d.). Herbert (2009, p329) also
comments on the inclusion of a script from an episode of Fawlty Towers,
mentioning striking car workers– the name of the episode gives its name to the current
piece. Herbert considers the 2009 piece
underlines and opposes the Thatcherite line of de-industrialisation’s
inevitability and affirms the move to a post-industrial economy.
All three chapters
in this series seem to resonate directly with me. One of the first pieces of
practice I undertook concerned the de-industrialisation of the UK and the rise
of China as a superpower. The piece I produced commented on the loss of
industry in Yorkshire in particular, and the vigorous and bullying rise of
Chinese imported goods. The saddest thing to see on the Mini carcass was the
British Leyland works plate next to the museum exhibit number. British industry
now only exists as some memory in the Museum space.
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| How are the mighty fallen |
Another piece of
work by Whipps which deals with archive and memory is “Birth Sprse in Peckham. Latham
was a Zimbabwean-born British experimental artist who was concerned with processes,
and the recording of sequences of events and patterns of knowledge (Stiles,
n.d.). Whipps investigated Latham’s
archive and interpreted it as a fragmented display, including an animation of
text from books in Latham’s collection, which he made during the exhibition itself
(Street, 2013). Whipps deliberately disturbed Latham’s archive by collapsing
together the various events and their representations. (Whipps. S.,(2) n.d.).
In all these
pieces of work, Whipps is taking archival material –photographs, documents or a
car – and re-interpreting it. He builds upon the memory, but he also re-works
it, and so by implication distorts it. He gives his own viewpoint; it’s not his
own lived experience, he is giving his version of someone else’s history. He is
often creating randomness from order, as with Latham’s archive and the archival
documents in the East International exhibition. He also makes works in progress
; the restoration of the Mini, the animation of Latham’s books. Here I believe
he is creating new experience – something existing, viewed differently – and thereby
new memories.
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