Photo: I haven't touched another human being in months, 2003 by David Sherry © the artist.
David Sherry's humorous take on life made Kerry Patterson laugh out loud but his work has a dark side too, as she found out.
David Sherry defines interremoteness as "the idea of being part of something, but being removed from it."
His most recent show called Interremoteness, at the Modern Art Gallery in Glasgow running until February 15, is the first in a series of exhibitions to showcase the work of Glasgow artists.
According to Sherry, he aims to explore the disrupting of everyday routine "ever so slightly, so that you have an altered view, sometimes on the most ordinary of activities."
The Glasgow-based artist is perhaps best known for his piece Stitching, 2001, a video in which he took on the role of a television presenter, demonstrating the process of stitching balsa wood to the soles of his feet.
Nominated for the Becks Futures prize in 2003, Sherry works in the tradition of performance-based art.
His previous works, such as running for buses he couldn’t catch, or applying for jobs he didn’t want, have been described as 'exercises in comic disappointment'. The new pieces produced for this exhibition are in the same vein.
On the walls of the gallery, Sherry has catalogued his success, or otherwise, in trying to stay in shops after they have closed. He employed a variety of tactics and the results are humorous, partly through the familiarity of the situation, as everyone has been asked to leave a shop, museum or public place at some point in their life.
Tackling the situation with the seriousness of doing a scientific experiment, Sherry has documented places, times and what was said to make him leave. With such works Sherry says he aims to "investigate settled patterns of communication and systematic processes of day to day life."
Photo: Untitled by David Sherry © the artist.
You’re Always On My Mind is a similarly comical piece, but with a darker side to it.
The artist has constructed a model of an auditorium from cardboard boxes. In the area where the stage should be is a television set that intermittently plays a video of a headless man running around empty streets, to the sound of Willie Nelson singing You’re Always On My Mind.
While watching the headless man is funny, it is also somehow sad, and the accompanying crime scene-like photographs of the man lying on the ground add a sinister element.
The strength of David Sherry’s art lies in his ability to examine mundane situations and make us see the inherent humour in everyday life. I can’t remember the last time an exhibition made me laugh out loud, or I heard other people laughing in an art gallery.
Yet to suggest that Sherry’s work is merely 'funny' is to ignore its darker edge. This dark humour comes through strongly in a piece such as You’re Always On My Mind. Here, the gory photographs balance the bizarre sight of the decapitated man running around confusedly in the video.
In his work, Sherry claims he is continually trying to disrupt his daily structure, "or trying to find a prop so I can look at it in a new way".
This idea of using situations that anyone can relate to, whilst being 'interremote' is what makes David Sherry’s work compelling, as is his ability to show the dark, humorous and the absurd within the familiar.
