Modern Art Oxford
An Oxford don in reverse, sticky situationism and a icon of Malawian independence are among the cultural collisions explored in this Fourth Plinth contender’s show
Here they stand, two big black elephants, their trunks raised in greeting. Elephants never forget, and these symbols of ancestral wisdom are clothed in sewn-together Oxford academic gowns, their ridiculous tassels forming the animals’ tails. Referencing the dances of the Nyau secret society of the Chewa people in Malawi, who wear costumes fashioned from cut up materials, the elephants stand beneath national flags, themselves spliced together and reimagined as colourful multinational banners. Symbols of hope, then, abstractions of a better world in Samson Kambalu’s New Liberia at Modern Art Oxford. Leaning against the walls are cinema signs, loosely describing the action in a couple of the jerky, black and white short films projected on the walls in another gallery. “In a distant land by the water, a man crouches down to sculpt leaves on a tree out of thin air,” reads one.
And there he is, the artist earnest at his task, picking at the air as the leaves appear as though by magic on the little tree, in one of Kambalu’s short, improvised films. Many of these hokey little routines and filmic skits, which he has been making for years, can also be found on the artist’s YouTube channel. In another he appears to be walking right through the brick buttresses of a cathedral, a feat only made possible by stopping and restarting the camera. And here he is again making an 18th-century drawing (so the caption tells us), but all he appears to be doing is making frantic, swiping gestures over a large drawing board in a fusty room.
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