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PEER London 9 February to 2 April
This exhibition of single- and multi-channel video works patches together images and myths from Michael Fortune's home in rural County Wexford, south-east Ireland. Through the presentation of family life and rituals both personal and more general to that region, Fortune documents the social ecology of his home. This occasionally provokes discomfort at the intimacy of his work but, more frequently, sheer boredom at the tedium of viewing what are essentially someone else's home videos. Primarily, this exhibition highlights the inherent problem of showing participatory work without context in a white cube. Produced over months and even years in close collaboration with his family and extended community, Fortune is capable here only of imaging a slim representation of what must be a complex, long-term social process. One might argue that these videos merely present a chance for voyeurism, with Fortune capitalising on the unfamiliar specificity of his homely aesthetic, all knick-knacks and trinkets lining the shelves. However, in knowing that this work is born out of more than a shallow adoption of community as subject, to lapse into such criticism would be crass. Ultimately, this presentation at PEER raises the question of why we as viewers are...