It’s a good moment for the South Korean artist Haegue Yang in London: Tate Modern’s showing a new acquisition of her work and then there’s this, a distilled guide to recent work. Several series are reflected — rather too many, in fact.
Yang’s best known for her works involving Venetian blinds. Two of her Sonic Dress Vehicles feature here, where the blinds are attached to frames on wheels, covered in bells. They jingle through the space when performers move them at various times of day. They’re partly inspired by the cumbersome, angular theatre costumes of the Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer, whose avant garde language abuts the everyday quality of the blinds. They appear abstract but then the two here are subtitled Hulky Head and Bulky Birdy, references I find off-putting — they shut down more abstract readings.
There are modernist references, too, in wall designs featuring angular gold vinyl shapes linking Yang’s Trustworthies collages. It would have been enough to have just had the Dress Vehicles and the wall works. But there are two sound works and other 2D pieces. Many are linked thematically, with ideas about migration and travel, unlearnt languages and alienation.
Perhaps, by including such a diversity of work, Yang aimed to bolster a sense of the ungraspable nature of itinerant identities. But gathered in a single installation, it feels too various and, as a result, too slight.
Until May 26 (020 7703 6120, southlondongallery.org)
