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Voxpop
Puella Group: Helen McCookerybook |
| Mark Tyson | |
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Helen McCookerybook's Voxpop Puella takes as its theme the seven ages of woman. The show involves the screening of seven short films, commissioned from seven women filmmakers, interspersed with seven songs, written and performed by McCookerybook. McCookerybook has an admirable willingness to experiment, but I had some difficulty with the show. Is McCookerybook a performance artist, a conceptual artist or a singer-songwriter? Do we have to categorise and label people? Sometimes I think we do: a singer songwriter might use video to enhance his or her music, a filmmaker might use music to enhance his or her films; one is subordinate to the other. Voxpop Puella gives equal billing to the songs and the music, without there being a clearly discernible relationship between them. McCookerybook was a punk musician in a former life, and she remains committed to directness and simplicity, and also to the spirit of 'do anything you wanna do'. Regarding the latter, as grown-ups we understand that life is more complicated than this. Regarding simplicity and directness I generally share McCookerybook sentiments; as the famous old punk, Albert Einstein said, 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so'. Overall I thought that McCookerybook's narrative of the seven ages of women didn't quite gel with her aesthetic ideas. 10
August to 16 August.
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