There is quite a science to cigarette rolling papers which are superficially quite simple – paper and gum – to give the best taste and tobacco filtration. “There are cheap rolling papers and there are good rolling papers”.
What are cigarette rolling papers made of? Not traditional paper, as they would very quickly go up in flames, but rag fibers from plants such as flax, hemp, sisal, rice straw and esparto. The best Cuban cigars are of course rolled in tobacco leaves – only the label is paper. Cigarette rolling papers are made all over the world, even in Scotland where the company Pot and Pan makes its papers with 92% rice and a gum derived from the resins of the African Acacia Senegalensis tree which goes back to the time of the Pharaohs.
The colourful boxes of many such cigarette rolling papers and cigarettes from around the world become spirit levels in the wall-sculptures by Brazilian artist Jac Leirner in the White Cube Gallery in Mason’s Yard London reflecting the uneasy equilibrium that is achieved by smoking, whether it be cigarettes or drugs, and also the international spread of the related industries. It is understandable that American cigarette papers should be available in Brazil, but strange to think of Scottish ones, perhaps a link back to the times when Scotland was a great trading nation and imported tobacco into the country through the port of Glasgow.
Alongside these works are photographic sequences which have their origins from when Leirner began collecting all sorts of everyday objects from everyday life, some of which were associated with her drug addiction at the time, and also images of miniature sculptures created from cocaine including a head and a heart, set against dollar notes and coins needed to purchase the materials for a temporary high.
Strung across the walls of the upstairs gallery are wires strung with the butts and filters from cigarettes and joints interspersed with spirit levels, through which the visitor ducks and weaves, creating beauty and balance from something that might perhaps be considered to be unbalanced, also showing that art can be created from the most basic of things, cigarette butts collected off the street, but perhaps also with a sinister overtone of an umbilical cord that makes it difficult to break the habit.
An unexpected series of work relating to a difficult subject, contrasting the swinging ups and downs of any addiction, whether drugs, cigarettes, sugar or alcohol with an equilibrium and balance which can be achieved when the debris of that old world is cleared away and used creatively.
