An artist’s take on working in a coal mine

Bottom line: A provocative consideration of work and existence that requires some hand-holding to appreciate.

For those who think art-going is a passive experience, a contemplative act of observing and mulling over, Atlanta artist Martha Whittington’s show, “Used Air,” at Inman Park’s Whitespace Gallery may be a bit of a surprise.

Occasionally art exhibitions go a different route and allow viewers to immerse themselves and participate in the alternative reality an artist has created. Such exhibits offer a chance to be invited into a more complex and fleshed-out vision of the artist’s imagination.

Whittington, who is primarily a sculptor but has lately delved into large-scale, more theatrical and immersive environments, has created just such an experience in “Used Air.” The inspiration for the project, said Whitespace Gallery owner Susan Bridges, was the metal coal chute tucked into the ground floor of her 1893 Inman Park home, the site of both Whitespace and the smaller Whitespec gallery where Whittington’s work appears.

That presence of a place where coal ashes were once collected by servants intersected with Whittington’s already evident interest in the meaning of labor. “Used Air” has much in common with Whittington’s 2012 solo exhibition “deus ex machina” at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, an installation centered on work, in which desks, machines and costumes suggested some future-world factory.

“Used Air” is about work too, specifically the dangerous, messy, complicated job of descending into the bowels of the earth to extract the coal that will heat a stranger’s house. Viewers may feel immediately ill at ease and entrapped as they step over the raised threshold of the Whitespec gallery that occupies the low-ceilinged, ground-floor cellar of Bridge’s home. Whittington uses the small, warrenlike space effectively to give a sense of enclosure and create a change of attitude in her audience. That sense of entrapment is reinforced by a large, graphite-coated, black wooden support beam in the center of the space that Whittington uses to lower the ceiling and shrink the space.

Ten birdcages housing 10 abstracted canaries with gray felt bodies and featureless faces hang on hooks to be taken into the gallery. Wind the boxes up and the canary will tweet in a slightly menacing, frantic way until its song dies down. The pieces reference the custom of coal miners once taking canaries with them into the mines to test the atmosphere for deadly gases. A sense of doom is immediately established since the canaries’ tweets soon fade out.

Inside the space, Whittington has created a minimalist rendition of a coal miner’s workspace. Visitors are invited to cut a piece of string from a roll of twine and affix a metal disk with a number to emphasize the anonymity of the job at hand. A number of pieces also reiterate themes of futility, entrapment and absurdity. A small wooden bucket hangs on a wall with a rag for washing up. Except the bucket has no bottom to hold water and the rag is filthy, coated in a layer of black graphite. On another wall are black rubber cups that promise refreshment, but again contain no bottom.

What Whittington has created is an example of existential labor that leads nowhere, of pointless gestures to get clean or have a drink that never transpire.

The show uses the coal mine — for most people one of the most terrifying jobs imaginable — to comment upon work but also upon mortality. Few people reckon with the chance that they will die each day when they enter their office or workspace, but coal miners contend with that reality on a daily basis.

A drawback to the show is the necessity of a guide to the experience: We’re used to keeping our hands off of artwork, but “Used Air” requires interaction and someone to let you know what is expected to appreciate the show’s themes.