You have to learn everything, even how to die. - Gertrude Stein
ACCA exhibitions always have a particular flavour, and they're almost always good. "Mortality" is a suggestive title, and the physical layout and 'environment' of the exhibition is suitably dark; that said, while themes of death and passing loom large, the perspective it takes on 'mortality' is broad enough to include all phases of life and some of its key markers, most notably infancy and early childhood, and desire and relationships. There's a strong emphasis on the moving image - video work, mostly - and a mix of other pieces in the series of darkened rooms through which one moves when exploring the exhibition.
Individual works that stood out, for various reasons:
* Bill Viola - "The Passing". Nearly an hour long, so I didn't see all of it, but I did catch the last bit and there was something very monumental and moving about it - drowned in water, it had the heaviness and immensity of, well, mortality.
* David Rosetzky - "Nothing like this". A video work which loops a few short vignettes (sometimes with small variations) with a series of voiceovers delivered in different sequences (and, again, with variations) so that there's no necessary relationship between any particular narration (or the character delivering it) or images, all framed as anecdotes from the uncertain mores of, I guess, modern romance.
* Charles Anderson - "dis/appearance: repatriation". A room installation, "various found and prepared objects, improvised constructions, light, bandaging, honey, and bee's wax" - bunk bed, table with objects, etc, much heavily swathed in white bandages and with lights set from underneath scattered around. Something of a Mary Celeste feel.
* Giulio Paolini - "L'altra figura". Two plaster cast heads on plinths in classical style (meant to invoke/pass as white marble), their gazes cast down at the shattered pieces of a third on the ground below (being the ground of the gallery itself).
* Tony Oursler - "Talking light". A dark room with only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the centre, flickering on and shedding light when it speaks, loud-whispering menacing phrases at intervals - "look at me ... look at me ... give me colours ... give me colours ...". I wondered if it was Pynchon-inspired (on balance, probably not).
