Adam Norton- Generic Escape Capsule

ADAM NORTON – GENERIC ESCAPE CAPSULE -2005

Maggie Bowcock

Most of us growing up in the fifties or sixties would have nostalgic memories prompted when viewing Norton’s, Generic Escape Capsule, on show at the Griffith College of Art Gallery as part of their permanent collection. The work is made up of 14 photographs and a 1960’s style free standing wardrobe fitted out with all that one would supposedly need  for survival in case of a nuclear attack

While the wardrobe contains a banal range of household items, many being from the 60’s era, such as, a Bunsen burner, tins of food, a chair, books proclaiming survival tips, the all-important bucket, and so on; the photographs educate the viewer on how the wardrobe was to be used. Each photograph has one word titles, presumably in case the viewer finds the images difficult to read. So titles such as Eating, Cooking, Shitting, fourteen times over are presented.

The tone of the work is droll as it mocks the absurdity of the ‘propaganda’ type marketing (that has existed since the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945) that was promoted during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The idea was that every household needed a backyard bunker  to shelter in, in the case of a nuclear attack. Presumably the  comment  the artist is  making  is more important to him  than the authenticity of the  objects faithful to the era;  as the camouflage suit the evacuee dons to enter the capsule wasn’t designed until the 1970’s and the fake Persian carpet that the wardrobe is sited on, certainly wasn’t a household item at that time.

This work  presents not as a social comment highlighting the anxiety that was very real for all those who lived through the events of the Second World War, but as a time capsule that reveals a simplistic even archaic, propaganda induced society of dreamers.  The mockery one reads from it almost trivialises the trauma of a post-war generation trying to make sense of one of the most outrageous acts of violence of the 20^th century.  One has to ask the question, is the artist being indulgent looking back and judging what from our 21^st Century perspective seems  a pathetic attempt at survival in the face of such enormous odds as a nuclear attack?