Airline security art lands at LCC

by Caroline Naharnowicz

The Research Gallery at London College of Communication (LCC) has been transformed into an airport security gate, which includes comical items in open suitcases, by London-based artist Leigh Clarke.

Clarke, who is also a curator and Senior Lecturer at LCC, gives the viewer a chance to have a behind-the-scenes experience in the eyes of customs officers who check for terrorist material in posters, video cassettes and photocopies.

The artist explores the way suspicious freight and luggage is examined and often re-examined by replacing ‘suspicious’ items with comical and seemly innocent paraphernalia.

This gives the comical items new definitions under the eye of the inspector, and looks into how they can be perceived as ‘threatening propaganda’.

Viewers can enter a room to see suitcases filled with 150 copies of Batman Forever VHS cassettes, with names of areas in London written in black ink on the sides of the tapes to add to its ‘suspicious’ nature.

“I started collecting the cassettes 6 years ago. I thought it would be odd to be defined by the most useless, peculiar and uncollectible thing like a Batman Forever video.

"Also, most people own one video of a certain film. To own 150 arouses suspicion or baffles people. For me, that is when it becomes art,” said Clarke.

Heathrow, ‘Theifrow’

Clarke’s inspiration derives from his childhood experiences at Heathrow Airport, where his father worked for the now defunct airline, Pan Am. 

Security was so relaxed, with no CCTV cameras or security alarms, that the cargo workers referred to the airport as ‘Theifrow’.

However after the Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, his father's job got more intense.

Continuing the family tradition, Clarke’s brother worked in Heathrow between 2006 and 2007, however the only thing that was allowed in the cargo area was his packed lunch.

“This exhibition highlights the growing trend of heightened airport security that effects every traveller” said Eileen Roell, a BA Marketing and Advertising student at LCC.

“Nowadays you can’t step on a plane unless you have all your tiny liquids in a clear pouch, yet you can still take lighters on board. What is considered as ‘threatening’ material is not consistent, and Clarke emphasises this.”

The exhibition on the 12th floor of the LCC tower block is on until Friday, March 19.