Time Out
4 July 2001
By Sarah Kent

South African artist Kendell Geers has downloaded a string of Lady Di jokes from the internet. "What’s the difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Porsche? Diana wouldn’t be seen dead in a Porsche… What did Princess Diana do when she heard the driver had been drinking? She hit the roof." And these are the funny ones. Transferred on to slides, the jokes are projected low on the wall at rate of knots that, at first, is irritating then horribly compelling. The insults also come thick and fast - so fast that reading the red and green words as they morph rapidly into one another is virtually impossible. Walk towards the screen, though, and they freeze - publicly denouncing you as a dirty retard, a dick-sniffer, a wog, a motherfucker or some such. Knowing that the selection is random doesn’t prevent you from feeling offended. It’s a neat stratagem that demonstrates how insults work: despite being arbitrary and impersonal, they have an unerring ability to stick.

Entry to the exhibition is along a wooden corridor hung with bright orange bodybags, whose cheery colour creates a suitably macabre counterpoint to the awful jokes and unearned insults. Welcome to a foreigner’s view of Britain as a land of sick humour, entrenched prejudice, and violence. Geers has replaced the letters of Robert Indiana’s famous painting ‘LOVE’ with the word ‘BOMB’ and filled the gallery with a slowed-down version of the Sex Pistols ‘Anarchy in the UK’. In case of attack, he provides a useful list of emergency phone number tat includes 999, a rape line, Childline and missing persons. Perhaps he anticipates leaving the country in a body bag.