I don’t feel like it: The indifference of objects

Camberwell Space is pleased to present an exhibition with Caroline Achaintre, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jess Flood-Paddock, Alex Heim, Hillary Koob-Sassen and Karin Ruggaber. A specific act, performed by a specific person. Clearly in particular circumstances, and for a certain end. Deliberate. And, without doubt, not done out of habit. This does not mean that one is helpless before the thing thus produced. Rather, that the object’s conditions become unexpected. It provokes an anomaly. Something that is underground starts to emerge – arbitrary choices, misleading decisions, mistakes provided for. An outline. The artists invited to take part in I Don’t Feel Like It: The Indifference of Objects have in previous works referred to discarded car parts, biological or financial structures, animated clocks, Chinese Rice Crackers or Dalston Night Clubs. Not that humility would become these things’ final sanctuary. On an emotional level, some objects might suggest a need for support. Care. Looking-after. Perhaps a homeopathic ambition. On a material or visual level, the opposite might be true. Dumb material, daft, unhygienic, contaminated with something else. Beyond rescue. The line between those two levels is precarious – sometimes overwhelming and untrustworthy. Included in the exhibition are also seven double-page spreads of photographs by Jacques-André Boiffard, which appear in the magazine Documents. Georges Bataille edited the publication in its two-year existence from 1929 -1930. Boiffard’s work is unusual in its close link with the magazine, and particularly with Bataille’s writing, leaving no trace of an existence beyond it. The photographs seem to accompany the text in ways that tell how things appear – rather than what they mean. This is especially the case with black and white images depicting Paris monuments that feature hot-air balloons cast in bronze, and automobiles carved out of white stone