John Squire – Heavy Metal Semantics (viewed February 3, 2009)


The ArsenalvCardiff match was


postponed, but I decided to still make the trip to London nonetheless. This was due in part to the fact that I had a single train ticket from London to Cardiff which I needed


rather


plays with the box rather than the present contained inside, or a collector of Star Wars figures who is also pretty fixated about the packs.


to collect from Paddington.


Unless I collected this ticket, I would not be able to get a refund, which of course required a trip to London…well,


than dwell on this conundrum, I thought, what the hell, I’ll go anyway.


There were, after all, 2 further reasons I


wanted to be in London on this day (three if witnessing London’s “snow event” counted) – former Square contributor, John Mouse, was playing a gig there that night, and John Squire’s latest exhibition was being shown at the rather plush St. Martin’s Hotel. Turned out I’d chosen a good day to visit as his charming agent was on hand to supervise.


This exhibition is one of metal sculptures. Predominantly,


they show a flattened or


partly flattened form of a box or container. I confess to feeling that I didn’t have much to say about this one. Erm…some were shinier than others…?


The idea of exhibiting packaging, or


displaying what could be packaging as if it were the art


idea. Perhaps it brings to mind a child who 18 itself is of course not a new


Ultimately of course, boxes of packaging have a limited function, and this exhibition felt similarly utilitarian. Additionally, whereas most people who use packaging as art would use humour, Squire’s work does not.


Each piece is fairly rigid – it doesn’t look


pliable, like real packaging, particularly given the fact each is made of metal. Woman is a single sheet, with the word woman branded on it


repeatedly, which might imply being


obsessive about women, or a particular woman. Man on the other hand is one of the flattened box pieces, implying that the woman could either cover or “wrap up” the man, or in fact perhaps be folded up and contained inside the man. The fact that, as mentioned, neither piece looks very supple, might mean that perhaps they are meant to be viewed as cold, separate pieces, with no intention of any interaction.


Of course, there are layers of deceit in the works. Just as it


is difficult to say how a


flattened metal box, or a sheet of metal might “represent” a man or woman, at the same time, we are of course being fooled into thinking that what we are looking at is indeed a flattened metal box. It


isn’t of


course – as a work of art, it was never made to be a box, just to look like one, and this deception is achieved successfully.


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