When I visited John Costi towards the end of his six-month residency at the South London Gallery fire station, he plugged a pair of Gucci loafers into his computer.
Both shoes are dipped in thick glossy black paint and wired with speakers that play out heel sound. One of them plays a rap that Costi wrote as a teenager, while the other spouts a poem written by the artist as an adult, considering his time spent in prison for armed robbery .
“You must be laughing, aren’t you?” he smiled as the shoes played his teenage rap. He calls Gucci loafers an aspiration for young London gang members.
Jean Costi, CRACK ART PIPE (2020). Courtesy of the artist. Photo by John Costi.
The work is presented in “Found Football Difficult” (until June 18), the final exhibition of his residency. “There are a lot of personal sound pieces in the show that are quite dark, but still have a bit of wry humor,” he later told Artnet News.
The multidisciplinary artist’s distinctive work is formed from a deeply personal subject matter, woven with reflections on masculinity, family and the British prison system. The show takes its title from comments Costi received in a childhood newsletter: instead of football, he had to find other ways to forge his own definition of masculinity.
The sonic overload of two shoes delivering different recordings at the same time is characteristic of Costi’s work, which captures the attention of visitors from all angles. There’s a lot going on in the exhibition, which awakens multiple senses through smell, sound, a cacophony of visual stimuli and the invitation to participate in its installation by dancing or throwing pennies at the wall. “There are still gaps for people to figure things out for themselves,” he said. “But if you don’t notice the references, then maybe they’re not for you.”
‘John Costi: Found Football Difficult’, South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation view. Photo: Jo Underhill.
The exhibition spans two rooms, representing day and night; rebirth and death. The Renaissance Room is inspired by different elements of Costi’s family life. A blue denim bonded wall pays homage to the goddess Aphrodite and the artist’s Cypriot heritage; Versace blue jean the fragrance can be smelled; family archive photos from previous generations are enlarged on the walls; a totemic the installation in the center of the room represents an IPP inmate (prison sentences for public protection were handed down from 2005 to 2012 with indefinite durations; nearly 3,000 incarcerated under the controversial sentence are still stuck in the prison system long after its dismantling). Visitors are invited to dance around her, with footprints traced on the ground.
The Death Room pumps smoke from several points into a long gutter along a side wall; a huge photo of his child brother wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Harry Enfield’s famous ‘Loadsamoney’ slogan hangs on another wall; a diffuser fills the room with the scent of Joop! for men; along the back wall, a human form made of Gucci loafers, a sculptural model of a head framed in raw wood and nails and other found objects, is pinned in the shape of a crucifix. The figure represents the artist, or at least a past version of himself, whom he is trying to outrun.
‘John Costi: Found Football Difficult’, South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation view. Photo: Jo Underhill.
“Suicide is a pretty big theme in the second play,” he said. “Dangling moccasins are quite a powerful image for me. The more I advance in my thirties, the more I fear finding dangling moccasins: my uncle committed suicide and then two friends hanged themselves. Suicide is the only thing that I know who kills men. That and more.
This autobiographical exhibition draws on the lived experience of Costi; growing up in North London; aspire to correspond to an ideal; his time spent in prison for armed robbery; discover a new side of himself by making art; find their own version of masculinity. The story could be framed as a redemption arc with a happy ending: “a reformed convict finds joy through art”. But Costi’s work doesn’t tie everything together neatly: there’s warmth and love in references to his past, and a distrust of the present, especially the art world and its acceptance of culture. worker only when contained within the neat frame. boundaries of art itself.
“It’s easy to hang out and talk about the charm of working-class sensibility,” he said. “It’s like any kind of activism is commodified or hijacked. Pain or joy. The art isn’t real and it’s all luxury. My parents didn’t have time to make art because they were too busy working. Maybe I would have had to go to prison to make art. I think you have to be very careful with any type of marginalized person. Their stories will always be fascinating to people who don’t have to live on crap.
The idea of what it means to be a man is omnipresent in Costi’s work. “I think in my life I’ve been blessed to have some really strong women around me,” he said. “Some gender lines have been blurred in terms of strength and weakness. Some of the things I associated with masculinity are a little weak. The only emotion men are allowed to show is anger. Reactionary type behavior We can see masculinity as something silly and heteronormative like being able to change a tire in a car, or we might allow people to make artwork about their friends who kill themselves.
‘John Costi: Found Football Difficult’, South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation view. Photo: Jo Underhill.
While much of the work thoughtfully reflects his time spent in prison, there are also irreverent moments: three large blue metal signs in his studio that bear family photographs are actually marketing boards from the bookmaker of the north London that he went to jail for stealing. The show also contains highly sensitive material, including recorded readings of letters written by his mother and incarcerated friends at the time of his imprisonment.
Costi considers his artistic practice as one of the key elements that have changed his life. While institutionalized, he participated in an art therapy program as part of the renovation of the health care wing. Then, in the final six months of his sentence, he was granted day release to take a fine arts course at Kensington and Chelsea College. This was followed by training at Central Saint Martins. But the way for prisoners to explore their creativity is still extremely limited. He notes that his prison experience was a punishment rather than an attempt at rehabilitation.
“It’s something I don’t have much hope for,” he said. “In prison, there is no real rehabilitation or any form of healing. You see segregation and punishment. The things I’ve seen that help people, or at least give them hope that they can change, are things like King’s Fund, or write a song, or read a poem. That’s where you can heal, but the system isn’t going to do it for you.
“John Costi: found football difficultis on view until June 18 at the South London Gallery.
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