Performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and artist Gordon Matta-Clark were friends and active participants in the New York art community, working fluidly between visual art and performance.
Here is the text written by Alexander Montague Sparey:
The word ‘Underground’ is a tricky one for curators. It rather predicts failure. Conjuring up unspoken dark secrets, it leaves one to ask certain ethical questions as a consumer, wondering around through the dark concrete tunnels of the artist’s subconscious, who can’t even chase you out and beg you to leave. And so the Barbican picks the word ‘Downtown’, which apart from adding a certain geographical truth, is a great way of dodging the dangerous word. ‘Downtown’ lets you know that it was away from the centre, where people lived in warehouses, where cleanliness didn’t predominate and where there might even be a few rats running around. This sets the scene so perfectly, because this show is one of the least inviting exhibitions I have ever been to; and herein lies its strength.
Nothing about it tries to impress. There is no bow. No desperate need for you to enjoy yourself. And in this, the curators have managed to encapsulate the whole purpose of the 70s Downtowners work. Casual, real responses to life in New York in the 70s. ‘Art’? Not necessarily. Experiences? Yes. Experiments? Definitely. Filling time, turning things on their heads. Concepts. Abstractions. Performances, drawings, photographs, sketches, films, videos. Exercises of the mind and the body. Questions – some with answers and some without.
In a dark two-level space divided into several crudely-lit rooms you will stroll downtown and to the underground, and your purpose will be to have none, and back out you will walk into the concrete 70s maze that is the Barbican, liberated. A little like Laurie, Trisha and Gordon were, 40 years ago.
Alexander Montague Sparey
Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark
Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s
Until 22 may
Barbican Art Gallery
Barbican Centre
Silk Street London
EC2Y 8DS
