The Bearers, The Hippy Market, Natural World/Monkey Business in V & A & A

‘You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that’ Samuel Beckett

'V & A & A' was en exhibition that brought together three artists who on the surface couldn’t make work that looked more distinct from each other. Yet there are many links, other than an undeniable prowess. Formally speaking there’s informal geometry, rhythm runs thematically through the figuration of Boggon as much as the two abstract artists Benson and Jackson. All three have common ground in a belief that the only place you can have control in our nonsensical and sometimes unsightly world is in the studio.

Miro said: “I want to assassinate painting”, by which he meant he wanted to breathe new life into it. V&A&A reinvigorate the practice of art-making by an unrelenting curiosity and embracing vulnerability as a strength not a weakness. Jackson has talked of how Foucault reclaimed the use of the word ‘curiosity’ as an active term of engagement with the world, and that it embodies a form of concern: “it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us”. In divergent ways Benson, Boggon and Jackson take risks, wrecking then rescuing a piece, in all three traces of the world are in various stages of being expunged or put in the spotlight.

In urban slang she ‘killed it’ means to do something really well. So, if to assassinate art is to bring art to life, and modern experience to art, then these three artists have indeed killed it in this one act play we call ‘Life’.

Andy Cohen 2018

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