Assuming you go to the main bit of the South London Gallery and not to its swish new converted fire-station annexe, the first thing you see is a fixie bike, complete with a Brooks saddle, covered in Kardashian-esque taupe-coloured fur and adorned with a ram’s skull with massive curly horns. It’s called ‘Fucking Inbred Welsh Sheepshagger’. Bedwyr Williams’s work is atypical of this show, in that it’s both funny and unexpected. The rest is a mixed bag of 35 more artists, all of whom employ ‘humour’ in their work. The curators are keen to point out that it’s not meant to leave you in stitches, but that humour has consistently been deployed in art to wrong-foot, to undermine, to critique. Not to make you laugh, necessarily.
Which is just as well, cos none of it is funny. At best the work here is ‘wry’ or ‘witty’, which are polite ways of saying ‘not funny’. Co-curator Ryan Gander has created two big eyeballs, which follow you around the room. There’s a drawing of a mousehole at skirting-board level. At least two works feature clown masks. There is some good stuff. Pilvi Takala’s video ‘Real Snow White’ is ace: she gets escorted out of Disneyland Paris for being ‘in disguise’. Sarah Lucas’s ‘Yves’, one of her stuffed-tights jobs, is troubling and perverse as ever. It’s just not ‘hilarious’, like the curators claim. Inevitably, there are lots of obvious omissions: people like David Shrigley, Bob & Roberta Smith, Ragnar Kjartansson, Fischli & Weiss, artists whose humour (whether you like it or not) is intrinsic to their work, and a whole raft of meme-aware internet art. This is mostly pre-lols, pre-likes art, and it feels stale. There’s also no acknowledgement of the artists who have driven what the idea of comedy might be, like Gilbert & George. And there’s almost no photography.
But what do I know? Probably the only thing in the world more subjective than whether something’s art is whether something’s funny. Pop up the road to Goldsmiths and see the Mika Rottenberg show instead.
Bonus joke: How many artists does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten: one to change it and nine to stand around saying they did changing lightbulbs in their degree show.