Saturday 3rd October until Sunday 29th November 2009 @ Arnolfini, Bristol

Entering the Arnolfini nowadays is something like opening marmite for the first time; you know it is strong, you know that you will either love it or hate it and there is unlikely to be any middle ground. The Arnolfini likes their flavours to be intense and leave little room for sitting on the fence. Their PLATFORM season therefore, was surely to be as bold a challenge to some convention or other as any art can be.

With a little apprehension, an intrepid explorer of modern representative art is sure to go to this two-month programme of climate change protest events full of joy at the artist/activist onslaught on display. The 25 events use various forms of performance and expression, one for every year that this group of artists have worked together. What they have done with these 25 years is move things around. Put a shed inside a room. Actually, put a boat in a room; those quick off the mark can head to the first floor and see a wooden boat marooned in mid-gallery.

So it all attracts attention for being bizarre but once again results in the Arnolfini trying too hard. In October alone we had shadow poets, African poets, public drawing days - it’s impossible to list these all individually without sounding like an event programme. They have made an impression as art not climate changers.

The Arnolfini feels suitably on edge, but this is unlikely to be due to PLATFORM. After a month, the chalk scribbles on blackboards and large outside-brought-inside exhibits are starting to wear thin. It’s becoming more obvious that nothing has actually changed - Greenpeace protests are less worthy than violent as a rule and so art sharing the same raw emotion can surely only exasperate its targets. Sadly, although you can spend hours being interested in plans to create a “Walking Forest” (next arriving on November 14th) and other novelties, the tagline ‘How did you get here and where are we going?’ is not so much answered by the exhibits as the brochures.

It’s also a shame that Johanna Billing’s brilliant unemotional discussion of emotion and human interaction in ‘I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm’ (running simultaneously until 8th November) was so much more polished and engaging.

www.arnolfini.org.uk

Katy Austin