A WORLD VIEW IN THE SUNSHINE

A WORLD VIEW: JONATHAN LATHAM

The Serpentine Gallery

6th April 2017

Jonathan Latham, Speak, 1962. Installation view. 

I stumbled into the Serpentine Gallery’s “A World View: Jonathan Latham” almost entirely by chance. I was in London for the day, and the sun had come out. With only a few hours to spare, I was torn— should I take advantage of the warmth and frolic in the grass or should I try to see an exhibition on my ever too long list of art? An impossible choice. Then, in a sudden stroke of inspiration, the answer came to me: The Serpentine. I could have all of my sun-frolicking combined and all of my art (okay, some my art). Perfection. 

Giddy with the prospect of getting to have a bit of nature with my daily dose of culture, I made my way through Hyde Park to the gallery. London was truly at its best— happy dogs with lolling tongues dashed this way and that, the grass was impossibly green, and on the lake, people played in paddle boats among the geese. Is there anything more energising?

Jonathan Latham, Derelict Land Art:
 Five Sisters, 1976.

When I finally arrived at the gallery, Jonathan Latham’s work, while I couldn’t begin to describe it as pleasant, was just as inspiring. The exhibition opens with a selection of his films: Erth (1971), Talk Mr. Bard (1961), Speak (1962), Unclassified Material (1960), and Encyclopedia Britannica (1971). I was immediately hooked. By in large, the films were created using stop motion and often included a soundtrack of barely identifiable sounds (Talk Mr. Bard, for example, is scored with a patter of speech but words and sentences are impossible to discern). When I entered, Speak was playing— brightly coloured paper dots danced across a vibrant background to the tune of a circular saw (the wall text tells me that Latham was slicing through books). I encountered a variety of Latham’s work during my studies, but I had never seen these films before. I did a bit of research after leaving the exhibition, and much of the literature seems to classify them merely as emblems of the 1960s “psychedelic” trend. Speak was, after all, first created as a background for a Pink Floyd Concert. When I was sitting in the gallery space, however, with no background information, I read the piece differently. The cut out discs became planets and stars. The rapid pace came to symbolise travel.

Jonathan Latham, Big Breather, 1973.

I’m sure this reading is mostly to do with the fact that I watched Speak waiting for Latham’s Erth to come up in rotation (the rest of my reading is clearly down to the fact that I still haven’t stopped thinking about my thesis topic: the effect of the space race on art produced in the mid 20th century). Erth was a film I’d wanted to see for sometime. I had read about it while studying but I hadn’t ever managed to find a copy. Over the span of 25 minutes, photographs of the Earth from space are shown, montaged together with spoken word and pages from the encyclopaedia. Together with the other two pieces, Unclassified Material and Encyclopedia Britannica, these films present the perfect introduction to the remainder of the exhibition. The ideas are all there, even if you don’t necessarily have the tools or resources to make sense of them. 

Jonathan Latham, Least Event as a Habit, 1970.

The difficulty of Latham’s work has been one of the major criticisms I’ve encountered. While writing this. It’s not entirely without merit. Latham’s work and the ideas that underpinned it are complex. And true, the exhibition provides little in the way of explanatory material. I can’t help feeling like the curators made the right choices here, however. You don’t need to understand Latham’s flat time theory to get something from his work. Even without any context, the pieces on display in “A World View” clearly champion and convey one of the basic tenants of Latham’s ideology— that art can work alongside science to promote change and advancement. That art is a vital part of human life, a tool that can help us examine our present and reimagine our future.

The exhibition has all of the things you’d expect from a Latham exhibition— his one second drawings, his rolling paintings, his multi-media book collages. But it goes further too. A small display of TV monitors display films like Big Breather (1973), a documentation of a large bellows Latham installed outside of Imperial College that moved a column of water in accordance with the tides. The same room holds his 1970 Least Event as a Habit, a glass sphere containing a vacuum. Towards the end of the exhibition, there is a small presentation of his work with the Artist Placement Group, including Derelict Land Art: Five Sisters (1976). 

It is a small exhibition by necessity, but it’s all there for you. There is depth and imagination and a seemingly endless fount of inventiveness. It’s not hard to see why he’s an artist that has inspired countless others who have come after him. His legacy is long, and the work on view at the Serpentine clearly shows why he deserves it. In tribute to this legacy, the Serpentine have dedicated their second space, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, to four artists influenced by Latham— Douglas Gordan,Tania Bruguera, Laure Provost and Cally Spooner. 

Jonathan Latham, Even Tstructu Re.

The next time London is graced with a bit of sunshine, I recommend you take advantage and head to Kensington Gardens. There’s a whole new world view waiting for you there, and once you’ve taken it all it, you can spend the next few hours mulling it over in the grass. 

“A World View: Jonathan Latham” is on until 21 May 2017.