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From: C Rogers
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 24 July 2001
Bill Viola Anthony d@ffay London UK
Billy Viola you embarrass us. Flat screens straight out of Star Trek next generation, and actors who failed to get bit parts on the show because their faces were too rubbery. Always a stench of some acting class from the 70s. The public gawped at the woman going through her day, high brow big brother supposedly superior because it references religious painting. Fascinating like a moving dollhouse the scale is alluring but not more so than the animatronic Steiff teddy bear and monkey display at Hamleys which is amazing.
Upstairs Monsieur Grandiose moves on from humanity to the whole damn universe. He must be joking with this birth and stars and sea stuff. Matthew Collings says he saw people crying, I hope he was kidding, it reminded me of astronomy films they show in schools. Writing about it, it seems inconceivable that it was not even particularly visually exciting, but I think I thought it dull at the time. Viola with his big themes is what passes for a serious artist, whom people respond to emotionally because of their desperate desire to believe and their foolish faith in success. He is a pig’s stinker with a big budget.
Catherine Rogers
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