AT THE END OF ART

Looking for Billy Conklin

LONDON - How does one respond to the criticism or accolade that Billy Conklin is the new Damien Hirst? It simply puts my knickers in a twist. Damien’s a fluff, art-wise. He’s been England’s answer to Jeff Koons all along. The one put basketballs in an aquarium, the other tosses in an old dead shark. And both have a crew to do all their work for them.

In comes Billy Conklin. All bollocks. He goes after everybody and everything. Now that’s an artist for the 21st Century. So why does Billy suddenly abandon London for Detroit? And why is he taking his seminal show IS LONDON BURNING with him? To make sense of it all, we need to explore Conklin’s show a bit and, most important, what prompted this body of work.

On July 7th there were three terrorist bombings in the London underground system. People were killed. People were hurt. People maimed. And the next day, all the other people went on with their lives. But there were changes. Small changes. These other people were affected by not being directly affected. And Conklin wanted to record these imperceptible changes with his camera. A glimmer of sadness carried in the corner of an eye. Of doubt, of anticipation for the future. Even of anger and defiance. He wanted to document their faces and body language in order to be read by a larger audience that, in the end, would come to share these same doubts and apprehensions.

To this end, Conklin set up his camera in a butcher shop near Russell Square, where one of the tube stations was hit. He realised he had to shoot within 24 hours of the blasts to full-effect. He spent half the day of July 8th at the butcher’s shop then moved over to a kabob stand at King’s Cross. Whoever wandered in the door got their picture taken. And, like it or not, got their bloody emotions captured as well.

Within the week, Conklin had also found out about a terror response exercise held by the government in London. There were 200 role-playing victims in a terror exercise here, feigning a range of injuries, both chemical and from flying debris. A large debris pile itself, complete with crushed cars and a bus, was erected near the Bank Station where much of the action took place. Rumor has it that this simulated attack was happening at the same exact time as the actual bomb blasts.

The second part of Conklin’s project includes some of those actors who’d performed as casualties in this terror exercise. He brought them into his studio and asked them to recreate their responses to flying debris and chemical agents and the like. Whatever was their specialty. The resulting images were both horrific and comical at once.

Following the unfortunate incident of July 22^nd, Conklin invited photographer Stig Eklund to recreate a portrait of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes being shot in the head by police. Eklund ended up doing several more portraits, which were a fantastic addition to the exhibition. Conklin then mounted the completed show at the Treadwell Gallery on August 4th, now titled IS LONDON BURNING. But then the whole thing got gobsmacked from the blue.

First off there was a fight. Two critics went at each other at the opening and supposedly knocked each other about. But it wasn’t about the art, as I heard it. Being more about the hors d’oeuvres. I think Adrian double-dipped something. But the press put a provocative spin to it all anyway. Which got the attention of the authorities, those that could read. 

Three days later, responding to press accounts of the fight and of the show’s contents, police raided the exhibition. In the cloak of night they forced the gallery director, Louise Bluth, out of bed and downstairs to unlock the doors. They carted off all the portraits and took Eklund’s photo of Menezes getting shot as well. They took it for the actual thing, you see. A la Zapruder. As for the portraits, they told Bluth that several of the sitters were suspected terrorists, caught by Conklin's camera possibly scouting locations for the eventual July 21st attacks. They even made some arrests from it all. Later let go with apologies of course.

And then they gave everything back, only the show didn’t go on. They gave everything back, yes. But they also advised the gallery to shut down the exhibition permanently. Citing the work as inflammatory and anti-Islamic. Louise Bluth gave in to their harassment, to threats of further intimidation. And that was that. The work has suffered a self-imposed ban from the art community ever since. Never really having the time to create an audience, the press still went crazy attacking it all after the fact. And attacking Conklin. Cesar Marzetti even wrote a piece for La Voce dell'Arte accusing Conklin of being a sort of terrorist himself. His name went on a list, if lists exist. Whatever, the dust refused to settle and Conklin hasn’t found a gallery who’ll even look at his work since. Let alone exhibit it. Yet no one seems to know exactly what they’re afraid of here. And no one has the piss to question or stand up.

So IS LONDON BURNING gets deported to America. Detroit to be exact. A city that isn’t on any art map. At the end of art, so to speak. So his work should be safe now you’d think. The people there are reported to be generous and unencumbered with the prejudice and temerity of a thriving cultural hub. Conklin had already installed a show titled CENTERFOLDS at Detroit’s Museum of New Art. Its reception went unheralded. So much so, the museum’s director was encouraged to invite Conklin’s IS LONDON BURNING for a November opening.

Now his future securely tentative, Billy Conklin will only survive at the end of art. That place where only a handful make it, a handful show it, a handful buy it, and less than a handful understand it. 

-Alan Pittsfield from the ART TIMES  - October 4, 2005