When I started on this essay I had in mind a title – “Imagination Made Solid” – but now I think it might be “ Would Claire and Sean Lie To You?”.
I found Claire & Sean’s first foray into using Lego blocks as a medium for artistic expression surprising, confronting, and beautiful. (They have a knack for arranging mundane materials in an aesthetically pleasing way).
Surprising, for here was an artistic duo well known for their sculptures and assemblages making wall works for the first time. But, of course, as artists renowned for an unusual take on things, they were not using paint, or watercolour, or charcoal, but a medium profoundly associated with three-dimensional forms: Lego. And to my mind and most others, Lego was used to make structures, not create images. Also, the childhood building blocks were usually used to create replica objects or things from a child’s imagination – houses, vehicles, spaceships – that may not have lasted till the end of that day’s playtime, and destruction was part of the creative process. But because of this destructive element in the nature of childish play, these hard plastic bricks are virtually indestructible (if you trod on one your foot came off painfully second best). As artworks they are likely to outlast any painting!
The works of that series “Where we are going, Where we have been, Why“, 2010-2011, were confronting because of their subject matter, the title referring to a pre-prepared lesson created by Christa McAlliffe to be delivered from the space station to millions of children. The images of the works were those same images that were seared into the minds of the millions and millions of children and adults that watched, horrified, as the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated on the edge of space, the Lego brick structure of the works mimicking the pixilation of the screen as the cameras zoomed in to confirm the annihilation.
There are many aspects of that original series that continue through to this new body of work.
The works illustrate the power of human wanting to believe in something greater, and acknowledge the importance of photography and the power of mass-media imagery, certainly in the sense of the propagation of these phenomena from local lore into international sensation. It is often said ‘seeing is believing’, and though never really true, the adage that ‘the camera never lies’ held sway until very recently (probably until Photoshop came along). The Loch Ness Monster was a local legend until the 1934 photograph ‘proved’ her existence to a world-wide audience, so too Bigfoot. The ghostly mystery of Goddard’s Squadron exists only through a single photograph. Although numerous, UFO sightings are only given veracity with photographic evidence. Though not a photographic phenomenon, the Shroud of Turin could only gain widespread notoriety through photographic reproduction.
Interestingly, the pixilation inherent in building an image with Lego blocks not only mimics the basic construction of a digital image, but also metaphorically parallels the debunking of many of these phenomena – the further away from these works you are the clearer the image, the closer you get the more abstract and less convincing they appear. The ‘Nessie’ pic has been proven a hoax, so too the Bigfoot image, and Freddie in Goggard’s Squadron could be a trick of double or time exposure.
However, some mystery does remain. For me, perhaps the centrepiece of this exhibition is the Enfield Poltergeist work, as its story relies less on photographic evidence and more on the account of many witnesses over a period of time. Indeed, there is a police report of a young Constable being hit by (nothing less than) a Lego brick that flew unaided by human interference across the room, and was warm to the touch!
But possibly more interesting than the litany of weird phenomena during the period of haunting (levitation, gravely voice , furniture moving…)is the ongoing interest in the case. Sure, there was lots of media coverage at the time (in the 1970s), but the artists led me to a 2022 podcast devoting over an hour to dissecting the event. I was also sent a link to an online amateur investigation into Goddard’ Squadron….
Could this lead us to the kernel of the artists’ fascination; there’s something else going on here.
It occurred to me recently as I was drawn into the spectacle watching Lego Masters on TV in the hugely popular Sunday evening time slot: Lego is no longer just child’s play and the domain of children. My mother used to quote Corinthians to the teenage me ‘to set aside childish ways’ and there is a general sense that one turns from a child into an adult chrysalis like, a metamorphosis into another more sophisticated being, resistant to superstition and with reduced curiosity, resigned to life in a less wonderous world.
But Claire & Sean seem to be saying something different…
The fascination of these phenomena does not disappear as we grow older. In some cases, it does not diminish but grows stronger, blurring the line between childhood imaginings and adult longing for childhish innocence. The wonder lingers.
Space travel was considered the last frontier. But as scientists smash atoms into ever smaller bits, and we read in magazines of ‘The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality’, as we generally accept it, and physicists suggest and Hollywood seems to confirm the existence of parallel universes, humans now turn to solving the riddle of the metaphysical and paranormal not only as one of the frontiers of science but almost as an everyday hobby.
In making these stories, myths and legends of scary ghosts and mythological creatures solid, Claire & Sean acknowledge that yes, you grow bigger, but the childhood fears and fascinations, the gullibility and truth seeking never leave us.
The adult is an extension of the child within.
Would Claire & Sean lie to us?