If you’re poor – and hey, the overwhelming majority of us are – here’s a tiny crumb of comfort: money trickles down. The richer the rich get, the richer us deluded proletarian bozos get. That’s the idea behind trickle-down economics, anyway. And in British artist Benedict Drew’s first major institution show in the UK, that dry, depressing economic theory is reimagined as a dystopian daydream.
The central installation is a symmetrical mound of mirrors, monstrous eyes, TV screens and a big quivering gold gong. A voice from the screens waxes lyrical about socio-political economics as electronic blips and bloops fill the air. Images of bodies moving through mud blob across the screens, static hisses, the gong shakes. It’s like a future altar, a place where the plebs go to praise their rich overlords.
There are big textured wall hangings here too, and two more little film installations in colour Perspex environments. They’re definitely more of a sideshow, and work less well than the main room, but are cute enough.
Drew seems to be making a big political point, and he expresses it neatly with his paranoid DIY sci-fi aesthetics. But the whole thing is just too conceptually muddy. Honestly, Drew gives you so little to go on in terms of figuring the work out that my interpretation – or yours – might be total bollocks. It’s too obtuse, too abstract and a little too unapproachable to be something really great.
But, being generous, it still works as an installation. The whole thing’s an appealling mish-mash of papier-mâché craft and neat digital perfection, a cocktail of neon animation, humour, social-media mania and political neurosis.
The idea of wealth trickling down isn’t a theory here, it’s a disease ravaging humanity, keeping us sickly and complacent. Drew’s future of disembodied brains watching you bow to the rich feels worryingly unfuturistic
@eddyfrankel