Local Stories - Modern Art Oxford March 7 to April 30

Katerina Seda shows two strong works at Modern Art Oxford and

these fulfil two roles: by themselves they constitute the latest in a

series of exhibitions entitled 'Arrivals>New Art From The EU'

and simultaneously they ground the group show upstairs,

"Local Stories*.

Both of Seda's works are documented interventions. The first,

There is Nothing There, 2003, involved orchestrating a day in

which all the inhabitants of Ponetovice, a village in the Czech

Republic, coincided in their routine activities. They all swept the

pavement in front of their houses at roam, for instance, lunched

on dumplings with tomato sauce at noon and turned their lights

out at 1opm. There is a great volume of paperwork presented - a

manifesto and charts detailing the devising of the project, numer-

ous posters and letters documenting its implementation - and

the video of the event itself, including feedback from the partici-

pants, appears at the end on a small monitor. Nothing is held

back, yet we are left in no doubt that we would have to do some-

thing similar ourselves in order to understand such an event fully.

The rawness of some of the English translations - for instance,

"This .. threw me for a loop' - highlight the national and cultural

distance this work has travelled. Meanwhile, some of the very

details that seem most unfamiliar from a British perspective are

precisely those that call into question the value of difference: the

title of the leading newspaper, for instance, is Equality.

There is Nothing There, which jump-starts the thematic group

show installed above it, is a complex work that exposes the fantasy

of absolute consistency and discovers the pleasure of shared activ

ity and common purpose. It is salutary to be reminded that soli-

darity is something constantly won and lost in the 'games',

'actions' or 'regimes' - all Seda's terms - in which we find our-

selves taking part.

The second work by this young artist is It Doesn't Matter,

2005. Here the locality shifts from village to family - the broader

localities of country and planet, of nationality and humanity,

remain open to question - and another engaging event is staged,

another story developed. The scenario opens with the artist frus-

trated by the inactivity of her grandmother. It closes with a large

book full of drawings by the older woman: confident and detailed

renderings of the stock at Bro's Home Supplies Shop, all metic-

ulously recreated from memories of 33 years spent running the

tools room. Recognising the tablecloth that sits in the gallery from

the domestic photograph on the wall we get the connection but I

was left wishing for a more prodigious installation of the draw-

ings that resulted from the artist's granddaughterly prods and

'supervision' - the effusion of over 6ço tools is somehow con-

strained by the book on the table.

Photographs in the stairwell lead us up into Mark Neville's

installation of The Port Glasgow Book Project, 2004. This work

involved the artist photographing a particular community over an

extended period and publishing the results in a book. Just enough

books were printed to allow one for every member of the commu-

nity and the complimentary copies were delivered by boys from

the local football team. Neville has also collected the community's

various responses to his work throughout and since its comple

tion. It is hard to do justice to the project's power when it is

installed in a gallery context and Neville is clearly aware of this

issue, however it is not especially well resolved in this exhibition

In the rear gallery we find Gillian Wearing's film Tedi, 2003,

which was shot and shown in Tirana for the city's second bien-

nial. 'This work is shown alongside Asylum Seekers, 2003-05, by

Oxford photographer Rory Carnegie, together with paintings by

Laura Lancaster, a recent Northumbrian graduate, based on

found snapshots. Here the exhibition takes an uneasy turn and

seems to neglect questions of exactly whose locality and everyday

experience are being represented and are being addressed

Carnegie's photographic project suffers from comparison with

Rineke Dijkstra's practice, not represented in this exhibition, and

with Dijkstra's ongoing (since 1994) series of photographs of a

Bosnian refugee in Holland, Almerisa, in particular. Wearing's

funny, unsettling film presents a besuited young boy giving a

competent performance of unswerving nationalism. Standing in

front of a commemorative statue, for instance, the child reports

the tale of the relevant war hero. This brief work chimes painfully

with those abbreviated fragments of world news that appear in

British broadsheets - more with these than with the local-inter-

est' stories from which the exhibition takes its title.

Daniel Guzman's Happiness, 2002, with its singsong anarchy,

its light touch and translingual eloquence, provides a welcome

distraction. But it is Nalini Malani's video/ shadow-olav installa-

tion', Gamepieces, 2003, that seems set up to be the culmination

of the show and is given the expansive space of the whole upper

gallery. First shown at 'Poetic Justice', the 2003 Istanbul Biennial,

Gamepieces brings together so many elements that it should be a

cacophony yet is almost alarmingly tidy and calming: a song,