Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
ROse Finn-Kelcey wanted to create art that was neither self-aggrandizing nor self-deprecating. It’s a rare sentiment in the mind, where pride and humility come in handy, but Finn-Kelcey was a rare artist.
This show in Northampton’s new £5m art centre – the most beautiful restoration of the famous municipal offices and annexe municipal hall, complete with artists’ studios – is our return home. Finn-Kelcey was born here in 1945 and grew up on a nearby farm, but spent the 1970s and beyond creating a major feminist movement with art, installation, theatre, film and photography in London before her. died of motor neurone disease in 2014.
His approach to conceptual art is best summed up by Power for the People, a 1972 work that saw him raise two large flags at Battersea power station, which was once a power station, lighting up London and heavily polluted by coal. The flag, decorated with large, bold serif letters, is silly, silly, clever. And he insulted the noble neighbors across the river in Chelsea so that he knocked them down. So Finn-Kelcey: talking about gathering, cooperation, public opinion, always explaining how those things are used and restricted by people in power. The work is documented here in a large picture, flags flying in the wind, power stations burning in London.
Another photo shows the installation of revolving saloon doors installed in a Texas park. Removed from the mind, they act as dividers, as structures of separation and consent. They say this place is yours, that place is not, you can go there, but not in here.
The idea of the permission and who can give it also comes in another project called House Rules, two small LED displays, one red, one green. The instructions turn on the green – clean, reduce, dry, whip, cut them – while the restrictions go through the red – no floating, no games, no dependence, no washing. Do this, don’t. Like any female punk icon, Finn-Kelcey saw social restrictions as an expression of power and oppression, and she would not let them go unchallenged.
His other main topic was spiritual. In the center of the museum is a large rug with a Vatican stamp, and God now wears an eyepatch like an all-powerful, almost all-seeing bandit. Blobby’s yellow figures have space, large grain sacks from Playmobil, which are used here to represent everyday lives trying to enter the Pearly Gates. No job is perfect, all a little bad, a little lame.
Best of all, and the best work of the show, is Pays to Pray, a fully functional prayer vending machine. Whack in 20p, pick a number, and sad, silly, poetic words appear on the LED screens: “No one can pull my hair”, “It’s not worth it”, “I just want to curl up and sleep”. It’s the prayer of 21st-century atheists, millennials and complainers, pleading for freedom — and boredom. That’s what goes to religion today.
Finn-Kelcey was a funny, direct, critical, cynical, articulate artist who cared deeply about humanity, spirituality and power. This is not a proper retrospective of his work – it shows a few pictures and a few things – but it is a good information for an artist that the big agencies should pay more attention to.
