Benedict Drew: The Trickle-Down Syndrome

On the 20^th August 2017, I visited the Whitechapel Gallery in to view Benedict Drew’s exhibition ‘The Trickle-Down Syndrome’; his works are installation based and are focussed on interactive and sensory experiences. The piece is a five-room installation which encompasses a variety of experiences, from visual, to physically interacting with the piece. Initially, I looked at the work as a group of individual pieces within an exhibition and I didn’t see how they all correlated; however, as I experienced the piece collectively, I began to notice a running theme of surrealism within the piece and senses of emotion throughout the work which you can’t experience without having been there. The piece incorporates a wide range of references, including Busby Berkley’s 1930s stage-sets and Surrealist landscapes by Max Ernst, in order to find where the physical and digital meet. He achieves his outcomes through the use of psychedelic imagery both digitally and physically; Drew used newsprint to exhibit components of the exhibition which hold political value; it’s a powerful and informative medium as it is such an everyday method of spreading information about “the submersion in social and environmental despair” (Benedict Drew). The name of the piece originated from the 1980s phrase for the idea that one day, the wealth and benefits of the rich will hopefully ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of us. Visiting the exhibition rather than viewing images of it really heightened my senses and made me more emotionally invested within the piece due to the nature of his work.

Sources:

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/benedict-drew/ The Whitechapel Gallery – Benedict Drew