Saturday 9 January 2021

Adam Laerkesen

03 January - 06 February     Drunk on the Moon

Adam Laerkesen’s arresting installation reads like a still life. It is set out in a clear theatrical manner that seems to me, allegorical. And Adam agrees, inviting the obvious question – so what’s the allegory?  To which he replies, “I like to leave that a bit open-ended.”

“There’s a drunken figure on the left,” he explains - I can see it sprawled across a lectern, drunk on prayer and wine,  “and a female voice, among the woods under a full moon” he continues. And yes there is a malevolence lurking for me in the form of a classically draped ironing board she-wolf, tensed and ready to pounce. Ridden by a cloven-footed tree ladder I wonder?  “No” advises Adam, “it’s just a hoof that I carved at the end of a piece of wood as a conclusion”. 

After a while our conversation turned to the mythological figures Bob Dylan refers to in his songs. Which left me wondering, when later that night I found myself listening to “Isis” on Dylan’s, Desire album.


“I married Isis on the fifth day of May – but could not hold on to her very long – so I cut off my hair and rode straight away – for the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong…Isis, oh Isis, you mystical child – what drives me to you is what drives me insane – I still can remember the way that you smiled - on the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain.”

Google the song’s meaning and you will read – “Isis is a mystery, and the story makes no real sense – it is just a set of irrational images without the sequence that we so crave. And that’s why it works. It tempts you to think there is a meaningful sequence, but as you try to grab it, it walks away.”

Or as a friend of mine pointed out recently, the trick to meaning-fullness is in the gaps you leave between things for the viewer’s mind to fill in later. It keeps the work alive and assures its relevance to an audience. As a method it took Dylan from speed freak rock star to Nobel Laureate and it seems to work for Adam Laerkesen as well. 

Tony Twigg