These are some pictures from the exhibition ‘Some Are Smarter Than Others’ exhibition at Gasworks by Pio Abad. This exhibition was looking at how some objects can have social and political implications, involving photographs of silverware pots and a red flag which looked somewhat like the Soviet Union’s. As a concept this was an interesting idea as it looks at the fact that a simple object can harbour a lot of history and emotion, and even if an object were to simply resemble one that may have been involved in some significant event, it can cause a stir. When I heard the title of this exhibition, it immediately reminded me of George Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm’. This is a book inspired by communism (as most of his books are) where a farm of animals takes down the farmer and they create their own ‘equal’ society. In this book there is a line which says “everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”. There must be some kind of inspiration from this book.
Physical objects can stir nostalgia, and it is definitely true that they can be symbolic of a time and place as well. This flag is just a piece of material with a pattern on a stick. Yet, somehow it means a lot more to us than just that. The use of the Soviet flag is quite interesting because although a lot of terrible things happened under the Soviet Union, as English people I feel that the Nazi symbol is more striking to us. I think that this is mostly due to the fact that we aren’t as well educated about the goings on in and around Russia as we are of Germany in that period of time.
In my opinion this exhibition was sparse and not as well executed as it could have been. I think that the artist who created this piece of work had put more effort towards the concept than the actual piece. Having said that, as I have had time to think about his work it has made me think about the significance of purely physical things as a way of telling stories and remembering bad (or good) things that have happened in the past