Just before reaching the Kate MacGarry gallery in London to see Marcus Coates show, there is The Last Tuesday Society : a taxidermy boutique filled with skulls, dead animals and Gothic curiosities. A coincidence that will later remind me that it's less the macabre that Coates celebrates in his work than the transcending of animal spirit. His costumes from shamanic rituals are displayed in the gallery : a suit with deer's antlers, an adidas tracksuit with reebock trainers and dead badger hat, a metallic suit with white horse's head.
The book tucked in the adidas tracksuit's pocket is an encyclopedia of israeli and middle east birds (a reference that will make sense after viewing the plover's wing), the mannequin that resembles a city worker wears shoes laced by blank keys, referring to a pointless routine, a destiny unfulfilled, the recent banking system collapse ? In a nearby glass cabinet, shamanic props are shown in a false didactic manner : a masticated and reconstituted kit-kat, an onion bag from tesco filled with feathers from the Jay Garrulus Glandarius etc...
As it appears, Marcus Coates doesn't preach to the preached. His rituals are a surreal act between integrity and the farcical, forcing us to assess wether it's for real : do we cross the line to feel for the people and situations encountered ? do we keep safe, choosing to get the giggles ? - aren't we doing a bit of both ? Somehow, the odd shaking, sweating and squeaking helps to bring the truth safely, as it puts less attention on the challenging answers. Coates helps by going at the heart of the matter, in a subliminal manner.
When he dresses in animal skin having a pee at the pub, or films himself performing a shamanic ritual in a red-light district in respect to prostitutes (Radio shaman - filmed in Norway, as nigerian women challenge respectable locals), contrasted emotions are acted out. Which can be moving.
The shamanic trance he performs in front of the residents of a soon-to-be-destroyed tower block in Liverpool looking for housing alternatives(Journey to the Lower World) is cathartic for the audience. As he waits for a lift in their council estate or is having tea with a bunch of old ladies, wearing deer's antlers and dead animal skin, his presence in casual, everyday environments - the office, the city streets, the council estate -, highlights our disconnection from the natural world and its associated melancholic longing.
