Just when you’re convinced that you are nothing more than an irrelevant dinosaur, someone makes a pop culture reference that you get without the help of google and all of a sudden the 15 bottles of paracetamol you’ve painstakingly stockpiled (one per week so as not to alert the authorities) seems a total overreaction.
Kenneth Alme‘s My Tarp Has Sprung a Leak, a title taken from the song lyric of Nirvana’s superbly downbeat dirge Something in the Way, has a point to make about obsolescence. Alme notes the recurrence of tarpaulins in pop culture – as a makeshift shroud for Laura Palmer at the beginning of Twin Peaks, as a family shelter in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – and how they are often rendered useless by being punctured or torn in the execution of their duties. Alme, from Tønsberg in Norway, uses their weaknesses as a creative feature, first combining the plastic sheeting with canvases and a paint wash process to create his wall art, and then re-using the tarps for sculptural works which are exhibited in the same space. London gallery Rod Barton hosts Alme’s first UK show until 22 November.
