Friday 24 May 2013

The God-Machine: Coming soon to a major gallery space near you.

I saw this in the Guardian today, a preview of the National Gallery’s next big exhibition, Saints Alive.
Modelled in fibreglass, and lovingly recreated from the painted saints in the National’s collection, Landy’s characters and bodyparts look part-human and part-clunky robot, their mechanical elements cobbled together from pram wheels, crankshafts and rusted bits of salvaged engineering... See the saints come to life! Press a foot pedal and watch them suffer. A sword comes down on Peter’s head, again and again, with a hollow mechanical donk. Saint Michael's scales, with their diminutive cargo of cringing humans, go up and down, while the griddle that cooked Saint Lawrence glows like the bars of an electric fire.

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