Luke Willis Thompson's work inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam is a demanding, brave and highly personal work, as confrontational as Tracey Emin's 1999 readymade My Bed but without the fuck you attitude.
Viewers are driven by taxi from the artist's central city gallery, Hopkinson Cundy, to a Victorian period villa in the suburb of Epsom and left to wander through the rooms of the house. Immediately, ones concept of house and home is challenged. Many viewers, I imagine would come from a decidedly Bobo background and this house is far from that. Run down, dirty and packed with junk. Seemingly unloved, disrupting the idea of home comfort, security, warmth and nurture. And yet there is humanity here in the small things. Religious icons a sign of beliefs held, music and a piano, cats, kids toys, family photographs. Normal things. Yet, there is something else. I'm left with an unsettling feeling of an unspeakable past, of horrific events that have happened here that we don't want to know about.
The readymade is about modification and I'm looking for that as I walk through these rooms. But I can't see it. This opens up the nature of perception, what are we really looking at here? I'm thinking of impermanence, the passage of time, the essence of things and our own highly subjective, filtered view of reality, of what and how we see.
This work is a profoundly estranging experience, one that asks more questions than gives answers. It lingers with me still and is not to be missed.
Transport to the Epsom site is provided by Hopkinson Cundy. The work can only be viewed strictly during gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 11am-3pm up until March 31st. Allow approximately 45 minutes to view the work in its entirety. Bookings (especially for more than 4 people) are appreciated but not essential.
You can go to the Hopkinson Cundy site HERE
And some photographs I made:
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