Tuesday 15 April 2008
Remember Beslan? September 2004. Images of children carried from a seige; unconscious , bloody, frightened,dead. –wearing underwear maked with soot or blood -or God , I dont know. This is the subject for Mark Collishaw’s Deliverence an exhibition at Spring Projects Gallery in London. Hundreds of children died in Beslan's desperate fundamentalist version of taking candy from a baby. Russia’s mediawas there to make sure we remember and Mat Collishaw creates images –somelifesize and flashes them out from walls or shrinks them onto shadowless silveron exquisite little daguerrotypes. His images are artificed, local kids withMum’s and dads –a lot of ketchup. Beslan/Belsen to my dyslexic eyes there’s nodifference; horror, children, brutality. I’m not a parent –but to me kids in their underwear should be pulling on their school uniforms or getting ready for bed or waking form a nap in some hot afternoon –not bloodied and dying in the arms o fharrowed adults. And yet,there is something redemptive in the artificiality.Collishaw’s kids are today running down the street in Kentish Town, Mum’s lighting a benson andchatting to her sister. Its not true..not like those images…not like those images.
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