It's difficult to be truly open and responsive to work when the gallery is crowded and I will go back at a quieter time. These are my first impressions:
Lots of repetition of things that are the same but different: photographs of lips, photographs of women's knees, photographs of strawberries, paintings by different artists of the sea, brightly painted roman type statues, a wall of plastic flowerpots complete with plastic flowering plants attached sideways, a few glass cases of similar handbags and their contents, caricature pictures of the artist by various artists and, my favourite part of the show, a darkened room with a line of carousels, each made up of toys, touristy items or bits of ornaments, including the queen and a butterfly, revolving in front of a row of lights contained in coffee tins, creating a wall of constantly dancing and changing shadows. This was fun and reminded me a little of Christian Boltanski's shadow work but didn't excite me in the same way, partly because the disparate elements of the exhibition didn't add up to a feeling of awe and wonder . Feldman's work is manically unserious to the point where some of the ideas lack rigor; who do the handbags belong to - friends? acquaintances? strangers? It feels as if the show is not quite sure what it is doing - not quite a retrospective (perhaps partly because Feldman destroyed much of his work in the 80s) but not simply current work.
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