The job of a public gallery attendant is always a varied one, but Fiona Banner’s current (terrific) survey show at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham is offering some novel challenges not only for visitors but also for those in charge of the exhibits. Many of us who have suffered the often gruelling experience of viewing artists’ films either standing up or backside-achingly floor-bound are highly appreciative of the clever—and considerate—wheeze of using soft versions of her giant full stops in various fonts for seating viewers for her two films of canoodling windsocks and aerobatic Chinook helicopters. However, the collective weight of Banner’s appreciative public tends to distort these squashy artistic beanbags, so gallery staff have been instructed to perform some energetic plumping-up at regular intervals to restore them to their correct shape—which prompts something of an impromptu performance piece in its own right.
No such vigour is allowed anywhere near the hand-blown clear glass scaffolding tower that looms on the Ikon’s top floor. Not only is it almost invisible from certain angles, and so painfully easy to knock, but it’s also irresistible to anyone under the age of five who can spot a potential climbing frame at 50 paces…
In fact, right now Banner also needs to keep a beady eye on the reception of her works beyond her current show. The BBC has cheekily claimed that actor James McAvoy reading Orson Welles’s 1939 screenplay for his unmade film of Heart of Darkness on Radio 4 on Saturday October 24 is the “broadcast premiere” of the piece. Anyone in the know will recall that it was Banner who first gave this forgotten masterwork an airing when, on 31 March 2012, she organised a one-off performance of Welles’ entire Heart of Darkness screenplay by actor Brian Cox from a specially built facsimile river boat on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank. It was transmitted live and also subsequently streamed on the internet worldwide. Check your facts, Beeb!
