Sadie Coles HQ begins an offsite residency at 24 Cork Street with a month long solo presentation by Martine Syms, the first UK showing of her recent project Ugly Plymouths, 2020. First presented in Los Angeles earlier this year, the immersive video installation comprises a one-act play shown across three screens – starring Hot Dog, Doobie, and Le Que Sabe. As the narrative progresses, the three characters talk and sing alongside and over each other, one receding as another moves into the foreground. On occasion their dialogue falls into a robotic unison, a kind of emotionless chorus – the voices define the distance between them more than the relation. They have trouble relating, despite their efforts at romance, and this troubled connection is the subject of their dialogue.
In footage the characters are not visualized; only their surroundings, and surrounding thoughts, are. Videos pan across beach vacations, domestic scenes, music concerts and everyday life in motion. The video takes as its establishing environment the Los Angeles described in Bob Kaufman's poem “Hollywood”: in this Los Angeles, the city is sick without leave. Actors, artists, pimps, salesclerks and poets are selling delusions whole-heartedly, where there is always a catch and never a foundation.
