With the Freeze 20 exhibition opening at The Hospital this month the controversial YBAs who made a big splash two decades ago are being thrown back into the spotlight. Much has been said of the self promotional methods used by YBAs and the way in which the heady mix of parties, celebrity and huge sums of cash in some way overshadowed the importance of the art itself. The latest exhibition from Freeze original Anya Galliccio, however, serves to prove that for some YBAs at least it was talent, and not simply an opportunistic business sense, which earned them their recognition.
As a Goldsmiths graduate, Gallicio easily joins the ranks of other YBAs such as Hirst, yet where as Hirst’s work shocks and disgusts Gallicio produces pieces which are subtly thought provoking, generally engaging with themes of nature, time, beauty and decay. Her installation for the Camden Arts Centre sees a huge section of a tree, severed from it’s natural environment and pieced back together within a gallery setting using iron rods and wires.
Although seemingly unremarkable at first, walking round the tree one is faced with a paradoxical sense that nature is both a hostile force, as the tree intrudes into the man-made environment o f the gallery, and also incredibly fragile, as the wires and pins holding the tree together are increasingly visible. The piece is deceptively simple, although it is not often that the bare branches of a tree will hold my attention for more than seconds Gallicio’s piece kept me looking for a very long time.
The exhibition is well worth a visit, Gallicio makes the viewer aware of just how much everyday objects such as trees seem to lose beauty or meaning in their familiarity and then challenges this, thus achieving what all good art strives to do: encourage us to see things in a different way.
Anya Galliccio runs at the Camden Arts Centre until 14th September.
