Review: Susan Hiller

Susan Hiller’s works are an in interesting juxtaposition of objects, installations and evidential expression, depicting consciousness through her working life as an artist and woman from 1972 to present day.

I felt a certain nostalgia in personal experience, looking through Susan Hiller’s exhibition, anchored with a personal journey of the beginning of my life, as the ‘Painting Blocks’ at the entrance are full of cut up pieces of canvas’s all created from 1974-1982, the first six years of my life, I was inspired to see how busy she was. She is someone that has obviously embraced the concepts of life, death, rebirth, phoenix consciousness and evolved consistently.

For me the exhibition became coherent through my own development, ‘Psi Girls’, all from films depicting young girls and teenagers with psychic abilities, they looked, distant, innocent, interesting and struggling to find peace with their abilities. The trauma of the ‘unknown’ and the play of fear that can be created in sci- films seemed very present and very real for audience and child.

This was built on, by the well known violence seen in comedy with Punch and Judy, showing the dark side of being light, a concept used and talked about again and again. Such a historical exhibition, allowed us to see the anchor of conscious thought. ‘In Entertainment’ was made in 1990, we are all becoming more conscious of the need to let of steam with safe violent behaviour, have we accepted a need to express our dark sides or do we just keep on questioning why we use violence or abuse in cartoons and comedy, why does a conscious person need to put a pointer to express this violence?

For me the exhibition was a bit of maze in mapping out the territory of consciousness. There were so many key points, objects from the Freud museum; a ouiji board, objects used for magic, aura photography, films depicting psychic children, speakers talking about alien life. All evidential of usage of magic or the ‘Craft’, all proving the existence of something greater, all objects were still, not being used as if in a museum themselves. I wondered what was missing in the exhibition, as for me there was a key component not active?

We have real life evidence with ‘Witness’ made in 2000, 400 speakers, 10 audio tracks, all telling tales of extra terrestrial happenings. Quite a romantic walk through the speakers in a slightly bluish ghostly room. Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on your wall, installation with sound. A fire in a television with sound, hard to hear, comprehend, hypnotic, these works all giving a slightly eary feeling to the unknown.

So many moments introducing the bigger aspects of consciousness and ‘life’, 38 years of retrospective, however, I realised the aspect that was missing was the real evidence of Susan Hiller’s evolution with the art of her ‘Craft’. This to me was a safe exhibition, displayed by someone that hasn’t fully ‘come out’ as a ‘Sensitive’, which may sound like a heavy criticism, but its not aimed at her, there are many reasons why people that are highly conscious don’t come out, mainly because of discrimination and lack of support, due to lack of scientific evidence. Susan Hiller’s exhibition was evidential and therefore almost restricted to the boundaries of speaking to an audience that needed proof.

To me this is a circular pattern as at some point a ‘Sensitive’ has to work out if they are going to step in to being the question rather than be limited and held to other peoples questions and need for proof. Hiller may be comfortable in this place of her artistry, however to me there is a world of possibilities in usage of consciousness, peoples history as aliens or time travellers, on a spiritual level its possible to tap in to all these aspects and to be able to create beautiful abstract paintings, yet all her paintings here were burnt, what happened to the witches/sensitives historically? Yes you got it! From 1600’s they were all hung or burnt, on some level she will remember, the consciousness of history never leaves us, she has lovely painting skills. She comes over as still in the fear of coming out, it’s safe now, it maybe hard work and there maybe a bridge to cross in communication but its safe. The exhibition, to me had a very subtle underlying theme, I was entranced by a very sensitive personal expression of the way society views ‘Sensitive’s’, anchored with a sensitive debate on the level of violence historically used to discriminate them, a great retrospective, interesting work. - Photo/Text by Amanda McGregor © ArtLyst 2011

Susan Hiller  1 February - 15 May Tate Britain