Occult to do list

By Carrie Miller

It may seem strange to attend an exhibition about a book involving people getting turned on by car crashes in a gallery that’s actually in a car park, but strange is what collaborative duo Ms&Mr trade in. More precisely, it’s estrangement that is both the subject matter and the uncanny effect of their work.

While seen as part of a group of contemporary artists that have used video in order to construct alternative histories or speculative realities through the remix of archival footage and present material, the work of Ms&Mr is distinguished by a refined conceptual and aesthetic interest that is specifically located in a fascination with science fiction film and literature.

Occult to do list is a distillation of all of this, centred around JG Ballard’s masterwork Crash. A video that includes cut and pasted old home movie footage; a watercolour reproduction of the first edition of the book spot-lit by a car headlight; a sculpture of the word Crash in the book’s font. These elements coalesce into a show that not only throws into question the ontological relationship between the past, present and future, it’s one that makes you experience that dissonance at a visceral level.

Until Sunday 23 September

Alaska Projects, Kings Cross

http://home.alaskaprojects.com/

[Pic; Courtesy the artists]