Pat Flynn: Half-Life of a Miracle

I’ve been thinking a lot about eggs recently, a result of a week of experimental veganism triggering an obsession (and dream life) revolving around dairy products. Have you ever watched any ‘egg hack’ videos on YouTube? Did you know you can make a hard boiled scrambled egg by whizzing the egg around in a pair of tights, or that you can separate the yolk by squeezing it with a plastic bottle? Brilliant. Unrelatedly, this morning I spilt eggs Benedict over my laptop keyboard so this review is brought to you amid lingerings of hollandaise sauce. Perhaps I can return to it later just as the fellow from The Twits stores food in his beard…

Pat Flynn likes eggs too, big red planetary ones. An upside down egg, part of his digital animation Half Life of a Miracle (2015), gets closer and closer on the screen as if approaching from a spaceship. The label tells the viewer that the animation is about consumer culture, the title referring to businessman James Goldsmith’s economic hideaway in the Mexican jungle. It’s sort of reminiscent of a less futuristic Elizabeth Price product porn.

Another digital animation, Other Fatherland (2014) tells a simpler story. Playing on a small floor-set monitor, a lemon hanging from a string tries to ask a watermelon out on a date. The watermelon is having none of it and finally sprays the lemon with a Wizard of Oz-like green smoke. Poor lemon.

Food is everywhere in this show. A large close-up print of a chocolate bar, portraits of cheese; a sexy full waxed Edam, Black Bomber Cheddar, a wedge of yellow-waxed Gouda. These are not photographic images but digitally created – digi-cheeses. Perfectly smooth and Pixar-y.

A lot of Flynn’s work seems to be concerned with empty spaces or lost objects. A walking stick abandoned on a community centre floor (Healer, 2015) is filled with suggestion and comic potential; a microphone (Microphone, 2015) hangs in the air, held by a poltergeist, but with a jaunty cheeky energy as if turning up for an X-Factor audition. My favourites are prints of photo-frames (Cold Children, 2015), their stock images of smiling families removed, leaving empty squares and rectangles.

The over-explanation of some of the visual references in the work is slightly jarring. Yes the chocolate bar does have a bit of the stacked formalism of Donald Judd and there is a touch of Dan Flavin in a print like Juice (2015). But not quite enough to say so. I was, however, spying inside the notebook of a student during my visit and noticed DONALD JUDD written and twice underlined. So maybe I should just be quiet.

It’s great to see a local artist, represented by a local gallery (International 3) in a major institution in Manchester. This show felt like a refreshing surprise and it also left me hungry. On the way out there is a giant pineapple pot made by Kate Malone on display just outside Flynn’s exhibition. It’s not part of the show but it kind of is. It would taste nice with some of that cheese.