The PinchukArtCentre has placed a new installation of the British artist Harland Miller
"I Was Always Good at Finding Things I" featuring a group of people in tyvek protective suits taking bacteriological samples. This is the art centre's response to the situation developing around the influenza/VRI epidemic announced in Ukraine.
Art is sometimes a direct, sometimes a metaphoric reflection of reality that can be expressed in hyper realistic and, at times, ironical form.
The work of Miller is such a work that focuses our eye on the reality we live in today. Through his work the artist makes us conscious of that what is happening around us and reminds about the fact that each of us is connected and influenced by it. The installation, in its essence, is a mirror reflection of a human and its title "I Was Always Good at Finding Things I" tells us again how easily the humankind, while indulging phobias, tolerating mass manipulations and being caught up in a global panic, loses track of reality and starts looking for sense where it doesn't exist, interpreting events from a single angle and losing self-control... And may be, after seeing the mannequins wearing protective suits and realizing that they are not real people but just an art installation, a passerby will smile and understand that the worldview begins in his/her own mind first of all. An ironic attitude towards our fears might prove to be the most effective medicine in the present circumstances, and the most affordable one, for sure.
"I Was Always Good at Finding Things I", 2008
Seven figures (mannequins), wearing tyvek forensic suits, dust masks, boots and rubber gloves, some with clipboard, camera, bag; four posts with police tape
Dimensions variable
Harland Miller is both a writer and an artist, practicing both roles over a peripatetic career in both Europe and America.
After living and exhibiting in New York, Berlin and New Orleans during the 80s and 90s, Miller achieved critical acclaim with his debut novel, Slow down Arthur, Stick to Thirty, (2000), the story of a kid who travels around northern England with a David Bowie impersonator. In the same year he published a small novella, First I was Afraid, I was Petrified, based on the true story of a female relative with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, discovered when Miller came across a box full of Polaroid images she had taken of the knobs of a cooker. In 2001 Miller produced a series of paintings based of the dust jackets of Penguin books. By combining the motif inherent in the Penguin book, Miller found a way to marry aspects of Pop Art, abstraction and figurative painting at once, with his writer's love of text. The ensuing images are humorous, sardonic and nostalgic at the same time, while the painting style hints at the dog-eared, scuffed covers of the Penguin classics themselves. Miller continues to create work in this vein, expanding the book covers to include his own phrases, some hilarious and absurd, others with a lush melancholy. Miller was the Writer in Residence at the ICA for 2002 and over the course of his residence he programmed a number of events drawing from his experience in literature and fine art, which included a season devoted to the ongoing influence and legacy of Edgar Allen Poe.
Harland Miller was born in Yorkshire in 1964 and lives in London. Group exhibitions include Royal Academy, London (2006, 2005), Kunsthalle, Mannheim (2004) and the ICA, London (1996).
