British Art Show 9 review – is this really the art of a country in crisis?

Aberdeen Art Gallery
There’s lots of self-indulgent ‘radicalism’ here but plenty of humour too – and a magic mushroom-inspired Dracula

I am not a dog person and nor apparently is the artist Patrick Goddard. The talking dog in his film Animal Antics has an irritatingly smug voice and an unpleasant view of the world, predicated on its own sense of superiority to animals not blessed with the gift of speech. Yet it is a dog and a dirty one at that. “Have you ever tried to eat penguin poo?” it asks its owner. “Because I have.”

This appalling pooch is voiced by Goddard. It’s definitely one of the highlights of the British Art Show 9, the Hayward Gallery Touring’s three-yearly trawl of contemporary British art, which kicks off in Aberdeen before touring. But I am worried Goddard may be wasting his comedy talent in the art world when this stuff surely deserves a bigger audience. Then again, it is probably only in an art gallery that anyone could get away with the stuff this evil doggy says about David Attenborough.

British Art Show 9 is at Aberdeen Art Gallery until 10 October, then touring to Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth.

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