Christopher Williams studied under the legendary West Coast artist John Baldessari, and boy, does it show. His work has that exact same balance of conceptual rigour and too-cool-for-school styling, as revealed in this sly little headache of an exhibition.
This is a show of photography, about photography. Lots of the images feature such inoffensive subject matter that it barely registers on the eye: an ear of wheat against a cloudless sky; gleaming cookware; grinning blonde kids in the back of a car. More interesting are his cross-sectional pictures of camera lenses. These photographs of gleaming, intricate screws and components are essentially beautiful photographs of things that take beautiful photographs. That they’re displayed on (purposely) battered stud walls covered in bits of masking tape only adds to the feeling that Williams is trying to say: ‘Hey! Don’t take everything you see at face value. There’s always something else going on behind the scenes.’
But it’s when you head upstairs to the first floor that things start to get truly baffling – since it’s exactly the same as downstairs. Or… is it? The grinning blonde kids in this picture don’t look quite so cheerful. If their smiles were for the camera in the downstairs image, this is where they think it isn’t watching. More fool them. With Machiavellian glee, Williams seems to want to seduce us while showing us how he’s seducing us, and deceive us while showing us how he’s deceiving us. And if that sounds like he’s having his (beautifully photographed) cake and eating it, well, so be it.