The Brief

Look at some more images from this series on the artist’s website

• How do Pickering’s images make you feel?
• Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or misleading?

Sarah Pickering’s series Public Order does something different again to Seawright’s.  This time we are presented with images of a deserted town that could be anywhere.  When I look at them, I am reminded of the run-down areas of industrial West Yorkshire, where my wife is from.  Boarded up businesses and seedy looking night clubs like the one in the notes are commonplace.  While areas of the town are recovering from the socio-economic problems related to the decline of the steel and textile industries, there are areas where those problems are still obvious. The collection moves through the desolate town-scape leaving me with a sense of sadness more than fear because of my relationship with those areas.  I was actually disappointed at the feeling of being deceived as the collection becomes more obviously ‘not real’.  The compositions themselves use leading lines, shapes and textures beautifully, but I couldn’t initially see what the artist was trying to say.    While Flicks Night Club caused me to create a narrative about deserted streets, something very relevant to the current Coronavirus pandemic, the complementary image Behind Flicks Night Club says nothing to me apart from a pleasing matching of shape and colour.   I started to think more about what Pickering was looking for when she shot the series and in a video interview with Aperture [1], she describes the relationship she has with rules and authority.  She talks of her father being very much a fan of rules, so perhaps she was saying that beneath the surface there is a fabrication or fantasy.  The pictures that contain evidence of the ‘riot’ damage caused by the police training that takes place in the town, suggest that it’s ok to rebel authority, real or otherwise.

For me, as an art collection Public Order works well as each image connects with the other sand they are aesthetically pleasing.  However, unlike Seawright’s Sectarian Murder the context is all within the image i.e. without the key information that this is a police training ground, so the narrative is vague for me.  I confess that I don’t personally like the work as much as Seawright’s as the impact is less powerful on me.  Do I think it’s a misleading use of documentary?  I would say that it’s not more misleading that any of the work I’ve looked at so far.  The police do deal with riots and towns like this do exist, even if the details are embellished.

References

[1] Aperture Foundation, 2018, “Sarah Pickering on Public Order & Explosion series Excerpt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRAW_cPvfY&list=PLvAytXgNgEllIfZ7aw0pinYQjYVqqPDXq&index=34&t=0s