300616 – Primal – Tate Britain, London c2008

It has been eight years since we visited the Tate Britain to see the Chapman Brothers ‘The Chapman Family Collection’. “ an extraordinary collection of rare ethnographic and reliquary fetish objects from the former colonial regions of Camgib, Seirf and Ekoc, which the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman’s family had amassed over seventy years”…..Indeed!

I came across the work again recently and was touched by its simplicity.In a world that is changing at an ever increasing pace, fast becoming so dominated by technologies and their associated sophisticated professions. The pace of the change has alienated the democratic masses so it seems apt to reflect again at these primal pieces. The Chapman Brothers exhibition reminds us first that we are human and like our forefathers we struggle to comprehend the scale and complexity of the world and our place in it. The totem or reliquary packs all that is incomprehensible into a neat iconic package, a magical explanation of the misaligned and the misunderstood. They are the means by which we explain the unexplainable, simplified and all encompassing. Whether Gods of old or Corporates of new as individuals we are the same, displaced and lost.

Primal is accessible, child like, comforting, we have an emotive response to it that is non-intellectual. Primal objects are easily understood, easily manufactured, the original symbolism lost, misinterpreted or no longer relevant. Here the pieces can be read any way the audience wishes. As humans we are imperfect, contrarian, we have a sense of humour, and are lead by emotion, impulse and opinion. Being human is rarely rational, our creative being exists within our irrationality. Our ability to adapt and respond to the happy accident of the creative process drives progress. It is intuitive and ‘hands on’ which also reminds us, that unlike other species that share this planet… humans make things.

The Surrogate Twin