In “the future isn’t what it used to be,” Moarain House’s inaugural exhibition, Jack Jubb and Lotte Andersen approach methodologies of archiving, gathering audio recordings and images from a wide variety of sources. Andersen’s approach is one of the “crate digger,” sifting through flea markets and record stores for lost sounds, while Jubb works more like a search engine, flattening the plane of diverse media. Both artists swerve around the traps of nostalgia, instead probing memory and the ghosts of our personal and collective visual and sonic histories.
In his Home is Where the Haunt Is, Jack Jubb takes Architectural Digest interiors and airbrushes sci-fi creatures, aliens, and monsters into the scene. High-design, “good taste” spaces are jarred by what is arguably their aesthetic antithesis—fantasy art. There’s an Ork in your Eames lounge chair, corrupting the seductive austerity of the moment, the minimalist fantasy of today’s most discerning consumer.
Andersen’s work, from which the exhibition takes its name, pokes fun at the absurdity of history as a singular narrative by weaving audio clips from the 70s and more recent years to show how little has really changed. In comparing Willy Wonka ballads and Donald Trump speeches, the artist asks: What is real? What is a make-believe? Is there any difference?
Both artists are interested in challenging the clarity of narratives and the certainty of truth through a process of “weirding.” While Andersen contrasts beloved fictive universes with present day politics, Jubb uses airbrush techniques to create hauntingly low-res imagery. The theme of haunting, of ghosts, is palpable—whenever we take from the past, we are invoking a sort of ghoul.
“….transgressions of the line between natural and non-; elements out-of-place; crossed border and culture, inappropriate intimacies.” reads the press release for the show, a quote from Joshua Comaroff & Ong Ker-Shing’s book Horror in Architecture. An evocation of horror is often made via the unfamiliar, the uncanny, the out-of-place, but these perversions and “inappropriate intimacies” are also a necessary way to detach from and disturb what we believe in order to challenge our held understandings of reality. “The future isn’t what it used to be” is on view at Moarain House until Jan. 9th.
Jack Jubb, Home is where the haunt is (series), 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper 76 x 56 cm
Jack Jubb Chalice, 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper 76 x 56 cm
Lotte Andersen The future isn’t what it used to be, 2021 Speakers, cables, hat, pins, vase, amp, media player, audio (11 minutes) Dimensions variable
Jack Jubb Xenos, 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper 70 x 104 cm
Jack Jubb, Kirsten, 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper 104 x 70 cm
Jack Jubb, Home is where the haunt is (series), 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper 76 x 56 cm
Images courtesy the artists and Moarain House, London, Photos: Stephen White & Co
The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be
Review by Olivia Whittick
In “the future isn’t what it used to be,” Moarain House’s inaugural exhibition, Jack Jubb and Lotte Andersen approach methodologies of archiving, gathering audio recordings and images from a wide variety of sources. Andersen’s approach is one of the “crate digger,” sifting through flea markets and record stores for lost sounds, while Jubb works more like a search engine, flattening the plane of diverse media. Both artists swerve around the traps of nostalgia, instead probing memory and the ghosts of our personal and collective visual and sonic histories.
In his Home is Where the Haunt Is, Jack Jubb takes Architectural Digest interiors and airbrushes sci-fi creatures, aliens, and monsters into the scene. High-design, “good taste” spaces are jarred by what is arguably their aesthetic antithesis—fantasy art. There’s an Ork in your Eames lounge chair, corrupting the seductive austerity of the moment, the minimalist fantasy of today’s most discerning consumer.
Andersen’s work, from which the exhibition takes its name, pokes fun at the absurdity of history as a singular narrative by weaving audio clips from the 70s and more recent years to show how little has really changed. In comparing Willy Wonka ballads and Donald Trump speeches, the artist asks: What is real? What is a make-believe? Is there any difference?
Both artists are interested in challenging the clarity of narratives and the certainty of truth through a process of “weirding.” While Andersen contrasts beloved fictive universes with present day politics, Jubb uses airbrush techniques to create hauntingly low-res imagery. The theme of haunting, of ghosts, is palpable—whenever we take from the past, we are invoking a sort of ghoul.
“….transgressions of the line between natural and non-; elements out-of-place; crossed border and culture, inappropriate intimacies.” reads the press release for the show, a quote from Joshua Comaroff & Ong Ker-Shing’s book Horror in Architecture. An evocation of horror is often made via the unfamiliar, the uncanny, the out-of-place, but these perversions and “inappropriate intimacies” are also a necessary way to detach from and disturb what we believe in order to challenge our held understandings of reality. “The future isn’t what it used to be” is on view at Moarain House until Jan. 9th.
Jack Jubb, Home is where the haunt is (series), 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper
76 x 56 cm
Jack Jubb
Chalice, 2021
Acrylic on cotton rag paper
76 x 56 cm
Lotte Andersen
The future isn’t what it used to be, 2021
Speakers, cables, hat, pins, vase, amp, media player, audio (11 minutes)
Dimensions variable
Jack Jubb
Xenos, 2021
Acrylic on cotton rag paper
70 x 104 cm
Jack Jubb, Kirsten, 2021
Acrylic on cotton rag paper
104 x 70 cm
Jack Jubb, Home is where the haunt is (series), 2021 Acrylic on cotton rag paper
76 x 56 cm
Images courtesy the artists and Moarain House, London, Photos: Stephen White & Co