OTHER FUTURES
Podcast
Duplex is an articulation of da Cunha’s engagement with cultures of consumption, reuse, materiality and art history. Central to da Cunha’s practice is the ready-made and specifically, how perceptions of objects are affected by place, time and the results of labour. Da Cunha’s complex and subtle process of transforming materials and images create encounters with everyday objects that disentangle the instinctive responses inherent to particular materials, endowing the works with alternative modes of understanding; so cotton becomes marble, mops become tapestry, construction tools become mysterious relics and mundane objects echo art historical precedents. The result is a vibrant dialogue about the history and function of symbols and material in society, from park benches and umbrellas to cement mixers and beach towels.
The presentation echoes the form of a processional route through the galleries, so visitors encounter objects and motifs presented and revisited much as the artist approaches objects and materials in his work. In this respect the exhibition speaks to its location; resonating with connections to a familiar past. Visible from the gallery windows is Brighton’s North Gate, a stone arch built for the royal procession to pass through at the opening of the Brighton Pavilion, while each year the Brighton Pride march – the largest in country – also passes in front of the gallery windows. Duplex engages with these histories as movements through time and culture of the city; reappropriating old signifiers and embracing a more contingent, yet confident present.
Arch
In Arch da Cunha’s new work commissioned by Brighton CCA, this process plays out in epic scale before the gallery windows. The artist combines an iconic image of a black stiletto anchored within a concrete fairy cake: symbols of innocence and adulthood, indulgence and luxury, power and celebration. The work co-opts the language of advertising and consumption using the scale of the billboard hoarding; depicting its mysterious subject from multiple angles, rotating, much as we experience a display in a shop window yet without logos, price or explanation. In creating works for the public realm da Cunha is responsive to context. Grand Parade, the site of this work, was named for the processional royal route through Brighton, in the last year its has seen protests against police violence, marches in support of Black Lives and forms part of the Pride march route through the city. It is deeply connected to the act of walking. In the history of Brighton, as a centre of Pride and with a proud heritage of drag the image of the stiletto has a further resonance to the communities surrounding this work.
As with much of da Cunha’s work human presence is both central to it but also absent. The umbrella’s, walking sticks and shoes are all divorced from the bodies they serve and yet the works cannot be thought of without them. Arch is certainly no different, it is a celebration of human culture, an embrace of the absurd and the humorous as much as symbol of a collective history with all its glamour, oppression, hope and folly. At first glance Arch could be read as product placement from a luxury brand, but presented on the front of an art school, combining apparently unrelated objects and materials, it equally speaks to a process of experimentation and artistic vision.
Generously supported by Brighton Festival, Omni Colour and the Brazilian Embassy in London.