Glasgow’s art festival kicks off with an exhibition by BARBARA KRUGER, which takes her trademark style in striking new directions. Ruth Hedges gets an audience with one of American art’s great agitators.
hide and rule. It‘s an old tactic. but l'or those who wield power. it's tried and tested. BUsh tells Us you're with Us or against Us: lashion tells Us who’s cool and who‘s not; ady'ertisers sell lil‘estyles that you can either al‘l'ord to buy into or not. Nothing is more potent tor selling ideas. products. Values. body shapes than pitting humanity against itsell’.
Barbara Kruger trained at and worked Tor one such exponent iii a certain lil‘esty'le. (‘onde Nast's .IIm/cnmisc/lr'. She was successful. rose to the position ol' head designer. later working as a graphic designer. art director and picture editor tor a Variety of (‘onde Nast‘s other titles. including Home uml (fun/en. and could hay'e had a lucratiy'e career working for top international maga/ines. But she didn‘t. Instead .she took the tools of her trade and pttt them to work in challenging yalue systems assumed by society. including her l‘ormer employers. The place was New York. the time the I‘)7()s. and the canyas billboards. bus shelters and galleries.
Iior the last 3() years she's been making work that. most lamously. has taken graphic images. blown them up grainy like cheap newsprint or RUssian eonstt‘tlcti\'ist collage and splashed slogans across them. throwing into tension and conflict the way the images were originally intended. So. tor example. a comic illUstration by .S'uno'duy' I-ji'ening l’osr's Norman Rockwell. in which a little girl inspects a young boy's lIexing biceps. is stripped with the tagline. ‘We don't need another hero.‘ In another. a striking l'emale face with arched eyebrows and perl‘ectly painted lips stares out under the lines. ‘Your body is a battleground.‘ The enigmatic pronouns — ‘You‘. ‘\\'e‘. ‘I‘ ‘Your". ‘My' — are at once uniy'er'salising. personalising and challenging. Are we the ‘I'. the ‘yoU' or the ‘we‘ or all these things‘.’ Iiyeryone is complicit in structures of power that we are not always alert to. To be forced to think out of the assumed cont'ines and mantras is liberating and empowering.
‘I do think we live in a culture which is based on repetition. repetition. repetition.‘ Kruger says from her home in l.;\. ‘L'nt‘ortunately. like this horrible regime that‘s controlling Us here in America. it’s a repetition of denial and people seem to be asleep enough to believe it. I think there are dil'l‘erent ways to interrupt that. You can do it as a journalist. as a filmmaker. as a writer. as an artist — certainly as an educator — you can do it in so many ways.‘ This is key to what Kruger does. She interrupts and not in a polite. British. 'excuse me. would you mind it~ I . . . ‘ way. She shouts it in stark. simple words and pictures. though the ideas and suby'erted relationships are complex. For her specially commissioned GoMA show opening this month. the slogan. ‘Don't Die for Love. Stop Domestic Violence' is central to the message. This is backed up with facts about domestic \‘IOICIICC.
printed in green. oycrlaying images. The show
ties in with (io.\I.-\‘s long—term project RH/t‘ of
'l'liimih. dealing with issues oi \iolence against women. She also has a show coming to Tramway in .-\U:—'Ust ol’ \‘ItIeU work. "I‘welye'.
'I‘y'e tried to deal with issues ot’ pow er and control.‘ Kruger s11,“ Hi the (io.\I:\ show. ~’I’here are images and text on l‘our walls. pIUs the lloor and some text on the ceiling to create an eny'eloping space. It‘ll be different trom the way that Tramway will be eny'eloping. 'I‘ramway ‘s such an extraordinary space. so it‘s a great place to do that Video. This will be a more closed space. which I hope can maybe l‘orce the issues a bit in terms ol‘ abuse ol‘ power and domestic y'iolence.‘ she says.
Is this to create a swamping l‘eel'.’ ‘No. it can be immersiye in a l‘ocUsed way. as a contrast to this multi-tasking ey'erything. which is all about non— locUs.' Kruger says. ‘Ilere in America. that‘s what the powers that he want ~ non-t'ocUs then they can do anything. Sixty per cent or the people don‘t Vote here. It‘s horrit‘ying.‘ Perhaps the maxim tor the let century should be diy'ide. rule and multitask.
‘YOU TRY PUSH FOR CHANGE WITHIN THE STRUCTURE THAT CONST RUCT S AND CONSTRAINS YOU'-
Kruger tells me about work she did in I‘M—l in New York. which she redid in Switzerland last year. ()ne of the texts said: ‘My god is better than your god. the only god; what I love is better than what you love. it‘s more compelling. sexier: what I hate deser'y'es it.‘ ()n the walls it said: ‘Walk like us. talk like Us. think like us. hate like Us. love like us‘ and on the floor was a logo that said ‘How Dare You Not Be Me‘. She says someone asked her il~ it was a reaction to OH I. which. having been made in I‘M-l. it oby'ioUsly' wasn‘t. but she comments: ‘It shows the contestations around beliel‘. around power are ongoing oyer the centuries. They morph and change but they‘re yery much at work as long as people try and destroy dill‘erence.’
Kruger‘s style can seem crude. but her motiy'ation is subtle. She resists detini'ions by genre. gender. political orientation — she is an explorer. tacking Upstream into receiy'ed y'alues. attitudes and structures. ‘To me it‘s about how we are to one another. as people ol’ dit'l'erent genders. of different races. of different classes. and people ol~ the same groups] she says.
Video works. such as ‘Twely'e' which will be on show at Tramway. reyeal inner Voices. in conflict with their outer. social personae. What links the works is a constant tension between
I GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL
The body politic
urges and ideas that cont‘lict with social structures. These can be domestic. economic. gender or anything that shapes our liycs. ‘You try to make changes and pUsh t'or change and make your statement and be able to teed and shelter y'our‘scll' within that structure that constructs and contains you. That's where so—called struggle has been locatcdf Kruger sa_\s.
Born into a working-class lamin in Newark. New Jersey. Kruger has ney er been al'l’orded the luxury ol thinking she was beyond the market l'orces which shape otlt' interrelations. ‘I would haye to haye a huge inheritance to hayc lantasies like that.‘ she says. 'I actually belieye that the Islltd ot‘ people who talk about being outside the market don‘t really understand the eyerydayness ol' the world. We are within something and we can change the contours ol‘ that structure but to think that we‘re not in it is a delUsion.‘
By suby‘crting lrom within. by Using media. materials and spaces that lorm our eyeryday lil‘e. Kruger has woken slumbering conscioUsness across the world to the contours that shape the way we one. hate. beliey'e. disu'Ust and look in the mirror. There might hay c been some great spreads t‘or Home uml (jun/mi and we might haye been tempted into thinking how much the latest decking designs would change our liyes. but haying l‘oregone these delights. it‘s to our tar greatcr enrichment that Kruger quit when she did and cut a consistently dill'erent cloth.
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Thu 21 Apr—Sun 25 Sep
Barbara Kruger’s new work for Glasgow (opposite) uses green, in contrast to her trademark red, seen here in a New York installation (above) and a Melbourne billboard
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