myth, memory and family lore

"Knitted in a homely fashion in stripes of multicoloured wool, a bodysuit - one that covers the entire head - hangs forlornly against the gallery wall. It's the handiwork of the mother of Leonid Tishkov, one of five contemporary Russian artists featured in an exhibition that delves into myth, memory and family lore. Next to it there's footage of the besuited artist blindly prancing around on a rooftop, looking down upon a grey urban Soviet-era sprawl.

Tishkov's work, which also includes his childhood bed - a lightbox has replaced the mattress and a miniature figure of the artist perches on the rusted iron bedpost - captures something of the mood of much of the rest of the exhibition, in which we see a craft-based folksy aesthetic knitted to a conceptual sensibility. A certain playfulness vies with a prevailing melancholy.[...]

But if the mood occasionally slips into easy nostalgia, the brutal imagery in the work of Stanislav Volyazlovsky pulls us up sharply: drawings on stained prison pillowcases of masked children sucking on tubes connected to fellow inmates - an allegory, we read, of Russia's relationship to the Ukraine. [...]"

Fisun Guener, Art Review: Past Future Perfect, in Metro, 19 May 2009, p.25