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December 4, 2010 – Review
Jimmie Durham’s "Arts, Media, and Sports" at Sprovieri, London
Colin Chinnery
One enters the modest exhibition space of Sprovieri through what looks like a homemade security gate. The title of the show, “Arts, Media, and Sports,” hails from atop of this eponymous work, throwing visitors into a realm of Durhamian logic. What do these three realms—art, media, and sport—have in common, and what connects the title to the objects in the show? The show is dominated by two groups of colorful oil drums, Spring Fever (all works 2010) and Crude Oil, with multi-colored spills emanating from them. Another reoccurring motif in the show is the golf club, an object that appears in three sculptures, After ‘The Prize of the Silver Golf’, Second Life, and Some Of These People Are Dead.
The components of this exhibition form a matrix of meanings within the framework of Durham’s concerns, but there’s a sense that something is missing for it to come together as a whole. (Like the marriage of divisions in the British government’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.) To be fair, the works in this show were originally created for the Tatton Park Biennial (2010), and Durham’s solo show at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios (April 2010) called “Universal Miniature Golf (The Promised Land).” …