The floor is creaking and the air conditioning stinks. The new exhibition of the Carling brothers titled “Fuck face fetish” certainly lives up to it's name. Not only to they fuck with your face, but your skull and eventually your brain. Inside the hull of a large boat is a collection of child porn, encrusted with jewels. This brings up a moral, not to mention legal dilemma. How was the child porn procured? Is it okay to view child porn in an artistic subtext? I like to think so, without the child porn the piece would just be another piece of retro chic. The utter stillness of it encapsulated in a time bubble is somewhat a parody compared to the surrounding art works, acting similar where the hands on a clock meet, as if either were missing it would throw all future context out of the window. “Broken Britain” is a venerable soup of possible quality!
The surrounding area of the piece has been thrown into a visceral chaos. The white paint has been haphazardly slapped across every wall inside and outside the ship, apparently by a device the artists had created themselves that resembled a hosepipe. As you walk past the small wavelets of half-dried emulsion, that smell takes one back to the original art schools of the olden days when exhibitions like this were held on a smaller scale. The rawness of many of the works hark back to more primitive forms of art, toeing the line of parody while earnestly belonging into a space so far flung from the brutal that it almost becomes ridiculous. After being around here for a few minutes you get the same feeling as when one walks into a Buddhist Monastery or a Stock Exchange. This place is sacred, the sacred art of messing with your mind and playing wacky pranks.
Some of the painting by the youngest brother, Glen, is astounding in scope. Huge murals of celebrities riding motorcycles are all are weaved through tall pillars made of copper formed through electrolysis. In the centre of the pillars, illuminated by a video recording of the moon, is a chrome swan with a beak that flips open to reveal a used ashtray. While walking through the great copper pillars, I felt a sense of awe. Ten years ago Glen couldn't even hold a pen, though his brothers had eventually nurtured his artistic abilities for him to make such conceptual bullshit such as this.
The top deck of the boat is home to a geodesic dome protecting the art of Brian. You have to get top special security clearance to enter this controversial enigma. This micro-exhibition is definitely worth seeing just to say you have in the future, once people realize the true meaning of the triptych. Titled “Paki”, the three images are composed from shards of holographic plastic, building up vast cityscapes that are reminiscent of the human form. Underneath each picture is a quote from Brian Carling himself inviting people to spit on the plastic surface. Perhaps surprisingly for the viewer, there is not one speck of flob anywhere to be seen. Due to the controversial title, the exhibition has been demanded to be shut down by the Council. One must applaud Brian for being both the sacrificial media lamb while at the same time using the artwork to relay what he considers to something worth saying. "Relax, bro."
The final brother's work is being shown in the Captain's Quarters, eloquently redecorated and turned into a clinic for pregnant immigrants to give birth to children, therefore allowing the British citizenship. People lined up to watch in fascination as the baby opened its eyes for the first time while a doctor and a lawyer sat at a wooden desk to give the child a birth certificate and a passport. In one corner of the tiled room there was a kind of giant thermometer to measure how many babies had been born that week. While I was there it had just peaked past three hundred, though the exhibition is meant to be held for another nine months.
The collaborative pieces back down in the Hull are where the brothers perhaps flourish. Though above deck you enter a heady world of racism and seriousness (not to mention a cold sea breeze), you go down a flight of stairs and emerge into an atrium with a dozen or so paintings on display. The brothers are well known for painting in shifts, yet the final mix of oil paint is one image decided on democratically. Shafts of light are beamed down onto the bloated portraits of policemen painted with dead pigs. Other topics for the paintings are public transport, quitting smoking, pets and one or two surprises I won't mention in this article. As I walked down the dock, I noticed a final piece perhaps hidden from the average gallery goer. Amongst the crying of new born babies, protesters and the repetitive beating of the ocean against the shore I could hear a curious sound. Crouching down next to a wooden barrel, there was a small security camera filming me. A comment on CCTV society perhaps? I'll let you be the judge of that once you see it, though I shan't tell you which barrel. You'll have to sniff that one out for yourself.
