Mon 27 Jul |
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| Chris Osburn's Red State Exhibition: Excess and Despair in the American South.
Red State is a powerful take on everyday modern society in Southern America and is on display at the Leeds College of Art and Design until September 11th 2009. The main thing that disturbs me about what Osburn’s photographs illustrate is the many unbelievably hollow uses of religion as a form of tag line within advertising. I am not a Christian so am not offended on a personally-religious level, but what does offend me is the bastardisation of people’s faith. One of the milder examples of this is the piece entitled ‘$24,500’, which shows a billboard discouraging the community from using America’s heroin, meth, with the tag line, ‘Meth destroys, Jesus saves’. Okay, it namedrops but it’s fair enough, it’s for a good cause. However, the same cannot be said for the piece, ‘Praise the lord, eat a biscuit’, which speaks for itself and I think you’ll agree, takes the piss somewhat. The woman grinning inanely on the billboard brandishing the web address ‘jesushealedmywife.com’ (photo of the same title) isn’t quite as eye-rollingly terrible as the ‘Afford… auto repair. More Jesus’ message, in another one of Osburn’s photographs. In 2008 I backpacked through sixteen American states on the Greyhound bus, seeing with my own eyes how prevalent the Christian religion is in the Southern States. For a decade prior to this trip, I worked in marketing and advertising and so am privy to some of the tactics employed by companies to superficially reel in their target markets. So you put two and two together and see that it’s not just a coincidence that the ‘Jesus’ tag-lines are being used by companies on their audiences in States such as Georgia rather than the take-it-or-leave-it States further North. The brands there taking something that should be profound and blatantly whoring it because that’s what will get the attention of their target market (‘hey, these people like Jesus. Mention Jesus, would ya, Dave?’). What do people do when they see a billboard stating: ‘Afford… auto repair. More Jesus’? Chris feels that the majority will subconsciously register that garage with their saviour. What did I want to do when I saw it documented on Chris’s photo ‘More Jesus’? Well, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. As disturbing as it seems that our society can allow their faith to be flogged without particularly realising it, there are several photos in this exhibition which filled me with a ray of much-needed hope. ‘Imagine,’ is a photograph of a brave and poignant piece of art, being that of a question mark nailed to a cross with the words ‘what if he didn’t?’ at it’s base. Red State gives us examples of people standing up for their faith. ‘My God’ stood out to me in particular and a lot of this was to do with its placing upon the walls of the gallery. ‘My God’ is a snap-shot of a bumper sticker on a truck which proclaims definitely, ‘my God is real’. The photograph directly underneath that is the ‘jesushealedmywife.com’, which provides an obvious contrast. More of the interesting way Red State is displayed is in the matching of ‘Timeline’ and ‘Praise the Lord, eat a biscuit’; ‘Timeline’ presenting a 1990s faded and grimy billboard, and ‘Praise the Lord…’ being a super-duper, high-in-the-sky backlit noughties job. I thought the two pictures portrayed a timeline within themselves. The question is, if there were to be another photograph in a further ten years time, what would that be ? How far is this going to go? Maybe it would be of a billboard with automated grabbers that pick up your SUV as you pass and throw you into their outlet, booming, ‘Jesus would want this,’ into your ears. ‘Church was an important part of the southern upbringing,’ Chris says, ‘so these billboards and advertisements disturb me.’ Does he see us being led further down this route? ‘I hope not,’ he says, shaking his head sadly. ‘Maybe not, but probably. There a still a healthy bunch keeping it real; a large minority.’ After gaining a degree in anthropology at the University of Georgia, Osburn left his homeland for South Africa in his mid-twenties. He now lives in London with his wife, working as a photographer and writer. Chris views culture as an anthropologist and says that, although his work has art to it, it’s also to document. We discussed the poignancy of ‘Shady Rest’, a photograph of what was once a foliage and forest-rich quiet lane, now almost barren with machinery flattening the earth and a ‘for sale’ sign on the ground. ‘The bottom’s been falling out over the last ten years,’ says Chris, ‘but it was especially accelerated upon my last visit. It’s changing at a pace, it’s more desperate now. The credit crunch has hit it hard and now the car parks are filled with flea markets, which is new to me (‘Sweet Southern Smiles’ illustrates this). Everything’s for sale. Growing up, land was land, now it’s somebody’s to sell.’ So what does the future hold for us? I agree with Chris when he says that people are losing touch with their heritage and that something unique and special is being lost. There’s both good and bad about the changes that time inevitably brings, but to disassociate ourselves from what our souls naturally crave and to cheapen everything for the sake of instant gratification is another rusty nail in society’s coffin. Or should that be cross? After all, Jesus isn’t on it anymore, he’s buying a biscuit. For more information visit www.tikichris.com |