There are two ways of experiencing Alice Anderson’s show. You can look at several rooms of things that have been wrapped in copper wire: a camcorder, a canoe, a wheelbarrow, a flight of stairs. Or you can have a go yourself. One I would recommend; the other not. Anderson’s work is about the preservation of objects and the creation of memory in the digital age. The copper ‘wire’ (actually a stretchy metallic thread) presumably refers to the virtual nature of contemporary experience: it’s all just electrical pulses down cables. But once you’ve got that, these small-scale bits and bobs with their identical coverings have little impact or totemic heft.
Nope: if you’re going to get much out of it, you need to get hands-on. That involves booking ahead to spend an hour wrapping the body shell of a 1967 Ford Mustang, pride of Detroit. It’s a bit like the one Steve McQueen drives in ‘Bullitt’ (though it’s a coupé rather than a fastback). You snag your thread on a sticky-out bit of the car, and keep going. It’s a strange, meditative experience, and surprisingly tiring. When the hour’s up, my knees have turned to jelly from all the bending and stretching, and my mind has wandered through odd places. Crouching by the Ford’s nose, feeling underneath for a point to hitch your thread to, you might be a mechanic, a handmaiden, a car bomber.
You’re reminded that a lot of the Industrial Revolution, which presaged the automobile industry, was domestically scaled, with women and children doing the same small job over and over again. You must work around your fellow wrappers, while tiny things assume disproportionate importance (one end of my spool snags the thread, so it won’t play out evenly). On its own, this would have made a great piece. The other stuff reduces its impact, but you should have a go at wrapping the car. The car’s the star.
Chris Waywell