Rambling About

This week was the opening of our collective pre-degree show exhibition, ‘Yoke’. For this show each student was

asked to submit at least one object that was representative of their practice. The show works as both a preview to our degree show, a way to generate interest, and a method of trying things out. It is not a large show, we had to fit it all into a cabinet that is outside our studios.

The title ‘Yoke’ came as a way in which we could explain the concept for our show. A yoke is a tool used on farms to harness together two animals in order to pull a heavy weight. The word also has connections in many languages to the idea of collection and connection.

I have mentioned before how the work produced on CFAP is all of a very different nature is hard to connect to one another. We chose to play with this idea of creating connections between the objects that were arbitrary and unimportant in the context of the work. We did this through an hour long discussion in which over 300 connections between the objects were offered up. These connections were displayed on a poster covering one half of the cabinet, with the objects in the other half. The objects are not labelled, though during our discussion they had been assigned letters which appear on the poster. It is up to the spectator to create their own connections in much the same way as we did.

For this show we split into three groups that fed back to the whole group. These were, curatiorial, promotional and practical. I was involved with the practical side, helping to source the materials we needed, building shelves, painting the space and working out any other practical issues. It’s been a great help for our degree show, and we all seem to have worked out which roles we are best suited to.

Last week I printed out and went back through all of my blog entries from this academic year. I did this as I was beginning to feel I had lost a sense of direction with my work and was in a lot of confusion as to what to do next. It was a really useful exercise and helped me to settle on two ideas I want to carry forward towards the degree show. These ideas involve the floor plans of my gallery designs, which I shall talk about in more depth in a later blog this week. And the use of gallery guides.

When I first began looking into the gallery space it was through gallery maps. I was thinking about the safety of the gallery, and the way in which the gallery space controlled and directed the visitor. I found the maps problematic, as my view of a museum or gallery was somewhere that should be wandered aimlessly and becoming immersed in the surroundings. Right at the beginning of my research I came up with the idea of a handbook for a gallery, telling you how to act and what to do within the space. I searched on the internet to find the right kind of text so that I could learn the language used in handbooks. I then stumbled across ‘Art for Dummies cheatsheet’ by a former director of the Metropolitan Museum New York, Thomas Hoving [http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/art-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.navId-403673.html]. This ‘cheatsheet’ seemed incredibly one sided and contained the jem, ‘art and politics never mix’ which being on a critical theory course made me laugh (this book is oblivious to Ranciere’s ‘Art and Politics’ in which he claims all art is political, or to Joseph Beuys’s role in founding the Green Party).

Read More →

About a month ago I visited the Dulwich Picture Gallery as part of my re

search into gallery and museum spaces.  Something that interested me at the time, though I dismissed in my research as not related to gallery spaces as a whole, were the period style chairs and chests of drawers in the gallery.  These pieces of furniture I assume date back to the beginning of the gallery and when it was first built as the first public art gallery in Britain.  They feature mainly in the side galleries, along the main axis of the gallery there are large upholstered benches.  You are allowed to sit on the benches – you are not allowed to sit on the period style chairs.  It seemed a slightly ridiculous concept to me to have chairs that once were so obviously intended to be sat on made so redundant. 

            Last week I

made a small piece of work in response to this using the chairs within the studio.  It seemed to me that the idea translated quite well to the studio as it again expected that you can sit on any of the chairs.  It is however quite a different environment to the gallery.  The chairs in the gallery are obviously left in as an educational tool about the history of the gallery and of furnishings within the gallery.

            I created my own notice to go on chairs asking people ‘please don’t sit here’.  I then left this in the studio on one of the chairs.  Apparently when I had later left the studio one of my coursemates saw that I had put this on a chair.  His response was along the lines of ‘For F**** Sake…’  When I came back in on Monday my notice was on the floor.  

            I don’t know if this will lead me anywhere, except possibly to try this as an interven

tion in galleries I visit over Easter.  But in terms of the degree show I see it more as something I really wanted to try out, and not something I am expecting to use within the show.

Our degree show at Brighton opens to the public on 9th June.  We however, must have all our work installed and ready by 25th May, so that it can be marked by external examiners.  Writing this out makes it seem more and more necessary that I sort out my practice, which is currently a bit all over the place.

The others on my course would like me to present a proposal on my work next week.  My ideas all revolve around the gallery space and the way in which it is used by visitors.  Some of my ideas involve manipulating the space, this will have implications for our entire show.

There are only 16 people on my course, but the nature of CFAP (critical fine art practice) means that everybody’s work is very different, in media as well as content.  Our practice is informed by the theory we read, and everybody reads different things.  This means that creating continuity in a group show is difficult. 

Luckily we have the chance to experiment with our ‘preview show’ outside our studio in a cabinet.  We have titled this show ‘Yoke’, and I will talk more about this next week after it has opened.

The issue with my more intrusive ideas, as well as it affecting other people’s work, is that I was planning to use just one of the two studios that will become our gallery.  This of course affects the continuity of the entire show. 

Basically, I am greatful to have kept this blog, and hopefully I can use this to come up with a proposal about my work.

My crit on Monday went pretty much as predicted. The major issue with the work that I presented was due to it being unfinished work presented as finished. This meant that there was a level of confusion over what was being looked at and how the work was supposed to be received. The title ‘Experiments With Gallery Design’ caused people to question if it was a proposal for work to come or was a fully

resolved piece of work. There was more confusion caused by the floor plans on the wall, as the centre plan, which was of the structure that was partially built and partially marked out, was not in proportion to what was physically present.

I expected the work to be confusing. I do not see it as a resolved finished piece of work, more as a way for me to experiment with ideas. It was this that made it confusing. However, I have plenty of ideas to think about and lots of useful feedback on the presen

tation of my ideas that I can now continue to work on.

Over the next two weeks I want to look at two ideas that move away from physically altering a space and look at other aspects of the gallery that I have thought about during my research. These will be gallery guides and the chairs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The cardboard test of my gallery designs has been built. Instead of cardboard however I have used lining paper to make up the walls as it looks far neater and is more suitable for my crits next week. Unfortunately, I appear to have built myself a white cube space, which is not what I had intended. I have made some other changes that are intended to help me explore other ideas relating to m

y gallery space research. Instead of building the complete structure as originally planned I have build only half. The other half has become a floor plan of what I was going to build drawn directly onto the floor. I have been considering how my drawings could work as pieces, and one of the most appealing ideas was to transfer them to the floor in this way. I am also considering trying this with maps and routes around a gallery space.

Another change I have made is inside the ‘room’ that I have built. Rather than leaving the walls bare I have drawn (in the same tape as the floor drawing) some of my initial floor plans on the wall. Again this is to experiment with how these drawings could be used. I have also painted a square of a colour that I had been thinking of using for the original design ideas on the wall.

I’m not sure that this does much to dispel the feeling of white cube within what I have made, but I am hoping that these pieces in their entirety can go some way to showing my process during the crits on Monday. This is particularly important to show at this stage as I am not presenting a fully formed idea, and am also not allowed to speak to explain my work until the end of my allotted time.

I am currently struggling with a title for the work, I will not separate the elements of the work for the crit, so the title must encompass everything as well as helping the viewers to understand what they are critiquing. Currently I think it will be along the lines of, ‘experiments with gallery space’ or ‘Gallery Design’.

I’ve found writing this blog incredibly useful as a way of thinking about my practice.  I have been concerned that I’m getting ahead of myself with my plans to build a gallery space. We have been reminded a lot recently not to get too hung up on one idea at this stage as we could end up ignoring other (possibly better) possibilities. I’ve kept telling myself that I couldn’t think of any other ideas, but I think that really I just wasn’t making the effort. I seem to have jumped straight to the most obvious result of my research and it is perhaps a bit clumsy and also unnecessary. I may go back to these ideas, and I am still going to build a cardboard mock up that will help me explore my ideas around designing a space.
But for the next few weeks or so I am going to concentrate on ideas that have arisen following my tutor’s advice to make a list of as many ways I could think of to physically alter a space. My head has been so set on building something that I have missed other things about my practice that work well. As has been mentioned to me, the drawings I have made of floor plans are quite interesting in their own right and not just as rough plans. I also want to look at other ideas which I will test in the studios and the cardboard space that I am going to create this week.
I’m quite excited to be looking at other things, especially as I have been having doubts that building something in the way I have been thinking may not work. I hope that this post doesn’t make me appear to be feeling negative about my ideas to build a space, I will still keep that idea in mind. But my research has lead me to think about a number of different characteristics of a gallery and by building my own space I offer only one solution. And it is a solution that has been done time and time again – build a different gallery

One of the most predominant ideas in my research has been the idea of discovery within a gallery or museum and the feeling of getting lost among t

he work (such as the Buren research mentioned in my last post).  My favourite ideas for the design of our gallery space revolve around this idea.  I love the idea of using corridors between rooms to make the visitor want to seek out the artwork.  Currently I am thinking of creating rooms for each person to show their individual work in.  These rooms would be painted in a light colour, though probably not white.  Connecting these rooms would be corridors which would be narrow and painted dark to create a claustrophobic feeling.  Entry to the lighter rooms with the art works would be like a type of relief from the corridors.  

The corridors would also serve the purpose of separating the works.  This would work well on a course such as mine where there many different types of practice to be displayed within the one degree show.  We produce such a diverse amount of work between us that it has often been difficult in past exhibitions, and in past year’s degree shows, to display co

ntinuity between the works.  The gallery layout that I am currently looking at would allow there to be an emphasis on the different nature of the work produced on Critical Fine Art Practice BA (CFAP). 

Pictured

are some of the layouts and colour schemes I have been exploring.  I have paint samples in the post and will hopefully be building a mock up of two rooms separated by a corridor in our studios this week (Plan Pictured Below).  I will make this mock up from cardboard and chipboard that we have in the studio, though the actual gallery would probably be all boards and not cardboard! 

The main problem that I am trying to sort out is that of flooring.  We have very scratched wooden floors in our studios, and

it is expensive and timely to try to change them.  We will have two weeks to put up our exhibition, but I have to allow people exhibiting in my gallery space time to install their work.

I’ve been designing a few different gallery spaces based around our studios which will become our gallery in the degree show.  I’ve been struggling to decide what I want to achieve from a space and so have created a few designs.  Pictured here are designs that are meant to encourage the visitor in one route around the gallery, one that encourages wandering with no direction, creation of a maze like space and the use of corridors.

  

      

         I have been researching the works of Daniel Buren and Michael Asher and their reactions to gallery space.  One of the most appealing ideas came from reading about Buren’s exhibition The Museum That Did Not Exist.  This exhibition was at the Centre Pompidou a few years ago.  Buren split the space he eventually negotiated for the exhibition into a chequer board type effect (Below).  The aim of the space was to allow the visitors to move as they pleased.  In the

accompanying catalogue Bernard Blistène said ‘… very few exhibitions offer so much freedom to their visitors.  Few, too, have so determinately refused to impose an itinerary.  Few have been constructed with such a resolute idea about avoiding and scheduled, marked out route…  Buren wanted people to get lost in his show.  No question of a beginning or an end, of any obligatory circuit or a laid out path…’  I think that I would like to achieve something similar in my own gallery. 

To prepare ourselves for our degree show our tutor has set us a small project; to put on an exhibition in a display cabinet that is outside our studios.  For this exhibition each of us must provide at least one artefact to go in the space.  That’s 16 artefacts in a relatively small space.  The artefact must represent out practice so that the exhibition can work as a type of preview to the degree show.  As my course contains a lot of critical theory and some strong opinions, we began with a debate on what an artefact was.

                I began making a model to go in the cabinet as my artefact.  The model is similar to the models I made of mazes, though it is of one of my gallery designs for the studio.  While talking about it with people in the studio while I was making the model a question arose; is this a representation of my practice or my practice?  This question has had me a bit stumped all weekend.  I think it’s related to the difficulty I have describing my practice, especially as it has changed so much over the three years of my degree.  I see these models that I make as a way to plan installations and constructions that I want to build.  But I’m not sure if that makes them part of my practice or not.  I guess it does, particularly when the installation is never realised, as with the mazes (see edit to 7^th December 2011 entry).

                I am now trying to consider something that symbol what I am thinking about in my practice and my research.  I have been looking at direction of the spectator, through the artist controlling their actions such as in many performance, installation and participatory practices and through the gallery space itself.  The provision of direction and maps for the visitor to the gallery has been the focus of my most recent research.  And I have been trying to find ways to avoid such a rigid route around gallery spaces.  So a symbol of direction seems to be representational of my practice.  I am thinking of using either a map or a directional sign, probably an arrow that will become my artefact.

I’ve been told that I won’t get any funding from the university to help with my degree show project.  This could mean that I can’t make what I w

ant to for the show.  I will however carry on with it for now (I’m looking at colours for the walls at the moment), but I will also keep in mind any other ideas I have that could be more affordable.  One such idea I had been hoping to try out this weekend but laziness, procrastination and bad weather have prevented me.

                I want to see how people outside of a controlled, safe environment, such as a gallery, react to directions.  I am going to go to Queens Park in Brighton and tie arrows to the trees and see who follows them.  It’s a fairly simple project, and mostly just too see what happens.  I’m trying to work out how appealing and obvious to make the arrows, at the moment they are just cardboard and could be easily missed.  So I think I will make them bright fluorescent colours.  I also want to try this at the weekend when there will be more people around, including families with children who might be more likely to take part.  I’m going to wait for better weather too, and will probably repeat the experiment a few times with different things on the arrows.  I’m not expecting many people to follow them, but hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised.