Maxa Zoller on Attic Basement Garage
(2006)

 

Matt Lippiatt's installation 'Attic Basement Garage' contains all the elements I think make an art work: ambiguity, skill, political weight, wit. Lippiatt's installation is the first artwork you encounter entering the St Martin's graduation show. There they are: 18 cardboard boxes and bed sheets with feet. Like a little army of the third kind they are all facing the next room. But even as you walk around them, there are no hints, no clues as to their identity - apart from the carefully chosen clothing. A pair of little pink moccasins and sky blue jeans under a XL card box from 'Media Tools Soho Soundhouse'. This must be a girl. A child. Next one: black worn-out shoes, black trousers, the rest hidden under an old long purple/white bed sheet. Adult trailer trash? I like this one: long skinny dark brown corduroy trousers, kiddies' sneakers and a washed-out (bed?) sheet with little salmon dots. I used to have a comfort blanket as a kid and wanted to disappear in it.

Is this some funny hide and seek game? Where do these people come from? Are they homeless? Are they dangerous? My first associations were immigration, hijabs and burqas, the uncanny 'other', also, council estate, the invisible society. But as I picked up Lippiatt's leaflet I realised that there was a whole other dimension to the work. His main source of inspiration, Lippiatt writes, were his childhood 'fear games', like telling scary stories or disguising himself as a ghost. He then goes into an intelligent little spiel about the uncanny in film, from 'American Beauty' to 'Zombie'. For me, 'Attic Basement Garage' says a lot about the various manifestations of fear, or in other words, the construction of the 'other'. Lippiatt's installation is like a serious game, deep and playful, personal and political. I am looking forward to his next steps!

originally posted on axisweb.com

Maxa Zoller is a curator, lecturer and writer, specialising in contemporary art and experimental cinema.