If there is any
dialogue with a recognisable context, than it is with the art world. As
mentioned, two of her films already deal directly with the status of the
artist in their titles. In other films, the artist also appears to be
the main character of the film. Explicit references to well known
artworks are rather rare. In Waiting for Waste there is a
curious animation of a Mondrian painting, but just as familiar are the
many pipes and tubes with fluids oozing out of them. Shit, vomit, semen,
blood : although made up of only a few simple pencil lines, this
vitalistic universe seems related to the transgressive world of, for
instance, the artist Paul McCarthy. Anal regression, uninhibited
celebration of the so-called lower bodily functions, the beauty here is
usually pretty convulsive.
Which doesn't mean that schock value is all that Course is after.
Obviously incorporating nazi-emblems and hanging parents on the gallows,
dropping a baby from a carriage or suggesting an abortion is flirting
with taboos. But usually a shock is the result of a surprise effect. In
the work of Ann Course, there are no real such highlights or dramatic
climaxes. Her indecent iconography comes in a steady stream of
equivalent images, like hieroglyphs. More than a cunning, intellectual
play with Freudian categories, her work is an intuitive summoning up of
archetypal motifs and situations. One might say the drawings attest to a
sort of manic passion, the kind we associate first and foremost with
'art brut' artists. Often the scenes she evokes are oppressive and
primitive, devoid of all civilized norms, psychotic. On the other hand,
these sketches are far from vague symbols, they are extremely topical.
The same violent iconography of absurd alienation and pornographic
brutality, of groping hands, hungry eyes and lost faces is also
omnipresent in everyday life via the porn-industry, reality television
and rampant advertising. Course's work does not add to this kind of
visual assault. If anything, it is an attempt to control or somehow
exorcise the daily onslaught.
