Author
Guy A. Forster-Pearce
The Spots That Never Went
December 2021
Coinciding with this year’s PrEP Awareness Week and World AIDS Day artist Roelof Bakker’s ‘The Spots That Never Went’ exhibition space is an earnest abstract reminder of the tragic loss at the height of the AIDS pandemic; that is, the height of the west’s AIDS pandemic. Lest we forget that Sub-Saharan countries still face rampant transmission rates with UNAIDS predicting 7million new diagnoses over the next decade without concerted global action.
Bakker’s originating synonymous Artist Book from 2018 is extracted into the third dimension at the Photofusion Gallery in Brixton. A welcome 21st Century appropriation of the newspaper print form. Escorted up by a covid-marshalling gallery guardian, I am thrust into a magnified inquiry of spots. In truth, the space is such that I was at liberty to dart between works and dawdle, but what greeted me was a triptych of artworks intended to constitute the denouement of the space. Seek out the introductory label at the emergency exit to avoid my bewilderment.
The ever-maximising pattern of pixelated spots, pedantically numbered in experimental ‘subversions’, provide a robust, if peppered backdrop within this horseshoe-shaped section of the gallery. Cascading into this intimate depiction of the spots I notice a distinct individuality to each of the ‘Viral’ images. One even appears with two peaks of pixel counts to its top with a rather centre-aligned tapering base. Might this be the heart of a loved one; belonging to the alluring character ‘A’ referenced on the note to its anterior on the Filofax note? Images of collectable NFTs conjure in my mind here, unable to escape the Metro’s reporting I’d read on my way here. Perhaps, I too, am desperately trying to mine deeper meaning from pixels without full comprehension of their grander significance.
The note at this 11th station, on the outside of the horseshoe, eponymously reads “Just To Say That I’m Thinking Of You And Hope It Will Last” LOVE / A X. The bottom left corner is twice folded over itself, pushing the written text ceilingward in composition to create a negative space. I notice the four remaining hole punches are torn. Thus, the physical note has lost any practical methods of being filed away. The text is spaced out at the top before rapidly narrowing to squeeze the kiss into the bottom right-hand corner of the page. The writer peels away from their pen with a sense of abrupt urgency: “LOVE”! And in the accompanying articles, the artist explains that A succumbed to his diagnosis in the early 90s. Here we mourn the time that A still had left to be thinking of the person he loved. Truly destined for ephemeral discard, Bakker rescues this posthumously optimistic message through his bureaucratic scanning of the Filofax, preserving it for cultural posterity. A is a permanent mark on the artist that will never go and now by abstraction, resonates with me, and also you, dear reader. This note forms the centre-piece of an unbalanced triptych buttressed by two minimalist takes on Van Gogh’s sunflowers. To the left, clay grey ovals reduce their faces to a blur. I suppose we are to reconstitute these from memory alone. Shaping them in the image of our feeble memory alone. Ghosts. To the right, an excavated book retrieves the sunflower faces from pages inaccessible. We are to peer deep into the intricate nexus of page paper where thin strands across the top half mimic an eyelid staring back at you.
Still clinging to the now three-year-old Artist Book; a copy of the newspaper in tabloid print is laid to rest on a table, weighted on its final bottom right corner with a ripe yellow apple. We start to read this text back-to-front, confusingly. I’m one who looks with his fingers and can’t resist an immediate flick through the pages. There isn’t much to be spotted here. A series of ‘I Remember’ poems between processional re-presentations of spots don’t excite in the same way that the as the Artist’s Book adjacent does. A decaying apple is placed at a remove, to the top of the table, out of reach. In its mouldy state, it is quarantined away from the healthier apple that first invites us to the table. There are many links to be drawn between this nature of being and today’s lockdown-anxious populations.
The adjacent reading material goes on to detail the creative process with developmental decisions influenced by cultural moments, including the impact of Diana’s legendary hug and Isaac Newton’s falling apple. You can read Bakker’s thinking in the 14th volume of ‘The Blue Notebook’, Impact Press.
His nuanced and modern approach to printmaking is shown in ‘Forbidden Fruit (Queer)’ at the 6th station. Settled at the angular concave in this horseshoe is an ambiguous impaled yellow apple. The moss-covered trident-shaped stick may look to hang low from the apple in an unexcited position. At ease, sir! From another angle, it’s reaching wood branches in a few different directions. Without a leaf or root, it is difficult to orient. Perhaps unluckily for the apple it too has developed mould because of its physical association with the mouldy stick. Decay is the motif of infection for Bakker. The framing of this photo is aesthetically pleasing to the eye with shadows kept tight within the shot while the stick remains in a central position and the apple hovers to the top left-hand corner. Shadows are associated with legacy. For them to be wholly included here is a testament to the artist’s message. That even beyond the physical is our presence felt.
The unimaginatively titled ‘List of Works’ diagrammatic pamphlet encouraged me to take up a spot of voyeurism in peering past a fire alarm, out through the emergency exit door where 14. ‘I Remember A Time (Cruising)’ was displayed. This blown-up poetic sentence, typed in Times New Roman, was left to brave the elements. Abandoned on the brick terrace, at a remove from the comfort of an indoor space, as enjoyed by the rest of the artworks, my interest was sustained a little longer. Also ‘brave’ in content: the admission to a past cruising practice “when men stood in line around the pool table, backs against the wall” conjures vivid images within those initiated, while those with a more prudent perspective are left to project this image onto the external brick wall that surrounds the frame. This invitation to glance beyond the walls of the exhibition space immediately positions one in a transgressive state. Both taking pleasure in the imagined concept of busy bodies and inhabiting an uncomfortable nosiness akin to a Neighbourhood Watch-oriented busybody. The earworm that is Offer Nissim’s circuit party rave banger ‘Everybody Needs A Man’ rings through my head as I mentally formulate the clandestine excitability of a post-pubescent nubile to London’s darkroom scene.
Comparatively, this gallery was far more informal as workers within the building used this emergency exit as another entrance that bypassed the receptionist’s desk. I took sombre joy in exploring this exhibition by myself, it was quite an intimate affair. I encourage you to heed the words of Ocean Vuong: “loneliness is still time spent with the world”. Today was no different. Those who have passed on were renewed to life in a queer form of oral tradition.
Guy A. Forster-Pearce 