ONE MORE DAY TO REGRET | AVA Gallery tonight

B – Logically none. Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.

D -- And preferring what?

B – The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.

D -- But that is a violently extreme and personal point of view, of no help to us in the matter of Tal Coat

B –

D -- Perhaps that is enough for today.

Dialogue between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit.

(Beckett, S & Duthuit, G. 1965. Proust and Three dialogues. London: John Calder.)

Douglas Gimberg and Christian Nerf’s Escape to Robben Island (2008) represents a dismal failure. The angasi nkosi, angasi nkosi is cunningly presented as a boat; an object so seductive in its apparent functionality that various bystanders have attempted to try and convince the artists not to instigate or allow its destruction, but the boat is not a boat at all. The narrative strength of the actual ‘escape’ is similarly unsuccessful, instead of a simple explanation viewers are provided with a series of purposefully obscured fragments; a testimony about “boats and helicopters and the ferry and Robben island gets very close” is paired with a blatantly fake photograph and all too obvious patches of sea sand are left on the paddles and the hull. Rather than releasing a reasonable rationale and some concrete evidence (a few heroic group portraits or a video clip) that could verify the journey and cajole the viewer into believing in the legitimacy of the project Gimberg and Nerf scatter dead end clues that do more to convince the viewer that the trip probably didn’t even take place – a backwards logic that illustrates how one has to lie in order to avoid becoming a complete fraud, how one has to fail in order to avoid becoming disgustingly triumphant and how one can only avoid the pretence of the meaningful by attempting to express meaningless.