GT Cecilia Eriksson 1996
Transcience and humour. At the turn of every century, writers and artists usually express concern for the future and raise spiritual and moral questions. During the 18th century many people cherished the conviction that mankind was living in a dying culture. Now we are not only approaching a new century, but also a new millennium. At Bohuslans Museum The installation French Breakfast is being displayed.The artist Annette has been inspired by a sense of helplessness and anger at the French atomic bomb tests on the Mururoa Atoll. The theme of doom and destruction is strongly emphasised and there is a sense that one is observing the Last Supper in the history of mankind. Inevitably, one is forced to think of Peter Greenaway's film, "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover". Both artists use the 16th century still life style to make comments on the present. Annette's canvases go from black to white, with the white dominating. Spiders and ants are crawling on the table as if to remind us of the transience of all living things. Their work is full of contradictions and a plurality of interpretations, where the critical message has a tendency to drown in a sea of aesthetic attractions. Mozart's "The Magic Flute" glides almost unnoticed into our ears and reinforces the cinematic and theatrical aspects of the exhibition. A seven metre long table sits majestically in a room, the walls of which are decorated with an old fashioned art collection. A couple of pictures, one the Dutch still life, the other by Bruno Liljefors, stand out particularly from the silence of the walls and create a loaded dialogue with the vacuum packed lunch, consisting of chicken wings and the head of a hare. In this light the idyllic nature paintings of hunting scenes appear like a long lost paradise. Moreover, in comparison with the past century, our own destruction of nature and animals appears all the more brutal. Despite the grapes looking beautiful, we know that they have been chemically sprayed. The traditional food table has been
exposed to a humorous attack. Tinsel and glitter have been strewn over the porcelain and candlesticks. Next to the bunches of grapes in their beautiful bowls, are mice running playfully around. Magpies, which love to steal glittering objects, triumph over the vanity of man. Here there are no guests at the table, only the leftovers, a woman's glove, a set of false teeth. The scene is both frightening and beautiful. It is of course not the last supper of Christ we are witnessing, but there is something resolved about transience, which allows for spiritual contemplation.
