Rank – picturing the social order

I recently went to see the latest exhibition at the Northern gallery for contemporary art which is Rank – picturing the social order, 1516-2009.

I also saw this exhibition in Leeds however I wanted to revisit it, make some notes and also compare the differences between the two. Most of the key pieces were still there however others were notable by their absence including ‘Polyopoly’ by AOC Architecture and ‘Posession’ by Victor Burgin. There were some interesting additions to replace these missing pieces but the main difference was the progression through the gallery space.

I’ve always found exhibition design to be a curious thing – why some paintings are placed next to others and what we’re supposed to be thinking about their relationship between one another. At the NGCA the journey around the gallery space was a more fluid one, deliberately progressing through time starting with the Victorian era and progressing towards the twentieth century.

Gustav Dore was just one of the Victorian artists on show with a collection of etchings collectively entitled ‘London A Pilgrimage’. Every piece seems to be full to the brim of people – young, old, ill, infirm, wealthy, men and women. Looking at these images its difficult to think that there was a quiet place to be had in London during that time with people packed so close together. Something interesting to note – although many pictures feature a particular cross section of a community the poor are crowded together and so are the wealthy, they suffer the same overcrowding but with the wealthy there is order and a kind of smart attire that goes along with it. Rarely do the classes intermingle in the Dore images, on the opposing wall William Powel Frith’s ‘Derby Day’ totally contrasts that with all sections of society intermingling.

I’ve always thought when traveling abroad as a tourist it gives you a different perspective on how class structure operates, even in countries where class or rank isn’t supposed to exist. Its also interesting to consider how we interpret Victorian images – our understanding of what is going on, we are very much a tourist in the era as Dore was.

Next was a progression further towards modern times including ‘The Status Project’ by Heath Bunting. The work looks at people as being part of a system by which we can be processed through, that we are no longer individuals but merely part of a flowchart and diagrams which help to put us in our place. Perhaps disturbingly when confronted with such a large diagram the natural reaction is to trace ourselves through the diagram, an unconscious self processing since quantifying and quizzing ourselves has become a normal process.

On a similar theme of people as statistics the Social and Spacial Inequalities Research Group from Sheffield University also contributed some large scale diagrams of prosperity and poverty in the United Kingdom serving only to show the vast differences in the quality of life for some people in the UK.

Some of the more striking modern work on show was by Ant Macari and Chad MaCail. I’d seen some of Chad MaCail’s work before since it’d previously been over at The Baltic, the most interesting of the pieces on show was ‘Robots run zombies for wealthy parasites’.

The exhibition was carefully crafted to get participants to think about how we as individuals form and enter into our different social strata, what it means to be a part of a ‘class’ and if we are even aware that’s what we are a part of. Whats more interesting is how individuals can break free of class and possibly live outside of society and how we look to others to affirm our social status.

There is lots to take away from this exhibition but it raises more questions than its ever really able to answer – which isn’t as bad as it sounds by the way…

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