A Review of David Cotterell's "Monsters Of The Id" show at the Hansard Gallery

This has to be one of the most surreal , and eerie, gallery shows I’ve seen for a long time. David Cotterell’s “Monsters of the Id” show, comprised of several large installation pieces, is completely interactive, allowing viewers to survey the war in Hellman Province, Afghanistan, from multiple perspectives. However, this is not depicted in it’s typical “war-torn” state we are so used to seeing in the media. Instead, focus is placed more upon ideas of surveillance & our relationship to our surroundings.

The first piece to be seen, near the entrance of the gallery, is featured as a projection on a large curving wall. As viewers sit on the bench placed in the centre, facing this wall, sensors recognise their presence and create life-size figures that appear within the projection and seem to stare out at them. The more people present in this room, the more figures will appear.
This installation has the same affect on a later piece; a gallery-length model of a desert landscape, again with a projection laid over the top of it. Here, the projected image shows large groups of people from a birds-eye-view perspective.
I found this piece to be the most thought-provoking, as it prompted ideas of the insignificance of a human’s impact on a vast landscape. It also brought up issues of constant surveillance & being watched – you can’t expect privacy anywhere nowadays, not even in the middle of a desert!

Another section of the show featured a darkened room, lit by a single lamp on a desk, set up as a supposed military base. A computer screen, flashing with statistics, was also placed on the desk, across the room from a tent made of camouflage fabric.
This piece, I felt, didn’t fit with the rest of the show, due to its immediate lack of advanced technologies. However, after reviewing the exhibition as a whole, I now feel this room was designed to  fully immerse the viewer, in yet another way; from observing on the desert floor as figures pass you, to  hovering in a drone above the scene, this setting forces you to actually become involved in the war scenario.  

To conclude, as thought-provoking and enveloping as this show was, I feel it was more a demonstration of these new interactive technologies than anything else. The idea of war begins to get lost behind the work’s complex delivery, which I think is somewhere unnecessary.
Saying this, Cotterell’s intention of making viewer’s question their sense of presence was highly successful; we are either involved with or removed from the scene, and can only have so much control over it. We apply this idea to our own lives, and realise we sometimes have to strive to maintain our privacy.