Adrian Johnson: All Wound Up - Red Gallery exhibition, March-April 2009 By Philip Wincolmlee-Barnes

I am currently re-reading John Carey's The Intellectuals and The Masses, a fascinating (and sometimes troubling) survey of how the former regarded the latter from the late 19th Century until the 1930's. He charts a course via Nietzsche's theories of 'the Superman vs. the common people' (guess his preference...), H.G.Well's unpleasantly rabid eugenic outbursts, E.M.Forster's rallying against urban sprawl, the Mass Observation project, and Wyndham Lewis' tendency to regard Hitler as something of a Great Purifier. (Imagine that lot of crotchety brow-beaters turning up in the same place these days...)

Writers across those decades railed against the popular press, the right to universal education (women and working class children in particular shouldn't trouble their tiny minds with it...), and the unwashed hordes in general, with their cheap tinned food and 'mindless' entertainments. Carey posits the thesis - with plenty of quotes to confirm this - that the likes of these men, and T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound, for example - founded the Modernist movement (composing 'difficult' poetry and dissonant music, etc) to keep the riff raff out. Art was to be intentionally complicated and abstract, and not to be easily understood by all those grubby pipe-smoking men in pubs or by the rising class of middling suburban clerks. Which has little to do with Adrian Johnson's recent Red Gallery exhibition - as I'm sure he'll agree - except to beg the question, often asked, of what is art 'about' (or 'for'), and ought it always seem to be stuffy, 'difficult' and remote? I've written elsewhere about visitors trying to tease some meaning, some clear 'narrative', some recognisable form or other, from several of the venues' other more abstract displays.

Not that Johnson's work is 'difficult'. In fact, it was rather jolly: sculptures made from nothing more complex than bright rubber bands, held together with paperclips, which form taut geometric shapes and constructions. And notices encouraged visitors to 'twang' them so that they vibrated. Lots of random wobbles. Or, as he put it, 'My sculptures investigate movement and energy, bringing change and chance to shape their aesthetics', adding, 'If in time one of these frail elements in space should rupture, the composition would then change to one of infinite possibilities'.

In other words he didn't seem to mind if you accidentally 'twanged' too hard and broke one of the bands (which I didn't: partly out of English reserve, and partly because my arthritic mits can sometimes make even snapping rubber bands seem like too much hard work these days...) So, all in all, a bright, cheerful exhibition - though aesthetically well thought out, but playful nonetheless. Two of the three rooms were dominated by large singular works which could be 'brought to life' by operating motors and sending pulleys and twisting, suspended bicycle wheels into motion, creating various lines of colourful ripples around the room by the quivering elastic bands (which brought to mind Jean Tinguely's and Mark Pauline's self-destructive kinetic sculptures and machines, although in a much less drastic way).

This sort of colourful playfulness also reminded me of Ben Smith's recent installation at the same venue - reviewed elsewhere - in which snooker balls would ricochet around the gallery's walls via a series of gutters. I think I referred to that piece as being a kind of life-size version of the board game 'Mouse Trap' at the time, although I do realise that I have a tendency to be flippant when discussing some contemporary art (Adorno or Walter Benjamin I am clearly not...)

The aesthetic of abstract, minimalist sculpture used to be so severe and dour back in the 60's and 70's - Robert Morris' emotionally distant plinths, Carl Andre's stern arrangements of bricks, etc - which is ironic considering that the era was supposedly that of freedom and fun; now that we are living in the credit crunch noughties, with all its fears and uncertainties, perhaps art is assuming, as one of its functions, the need to lark about, watch things bounce about brightly, pluck at things merrily, and so on... Perhaps art of this kind is attempting to cheer us up, which doesn't sound like such a profound, chin-stroking activity in itself, but Johnson's wobbly bands and Ben's balls (I know, I couldn't resist...) certainly do put some harmless fun back into the sometimes sombre and austere pantomime that is Contemporary Art. It can certainly make you feel childishly young again, which suits me, as I'm getting dafter by the day (and enjoying it). So, for this often-debilitated, hobbling near-corpse I'm all for a bit of well-ordered and artistically pleasing daftness, even though, in addition, Johnson's work shows the rigour of the serious practitioner. So, it's all the fun of the (art) fair, then...

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