I’ve arrived home, rested from a peaceful holiday in Japan, unadjusted to the coldness and excessive Christmas songs of December. I feel like I might have broken through the jet lag, although I’ve been in bed by 9.30pm the past 2 nights.
I’ve actually come here to reflect on my use of the online exhibition that I created at the end of the residency, spurred on by this news item on a-n yesterday:
http://new.a-n.co.uk/news/single/blurring-the-boun…
“We see the Internet as a ‘para-site’; that is, a virtual space made up of multiple sites of articulation, that nevertheless function in relation to the properties of physical space. In this sense, the INMG can be seen to operate alongside the physical art gallery, and extend the boundaries and possibilities of exhibition into the expanded territory of the World Wide Web.”
I had hoped that as I came to the end of the residency that I would be able to show the work I had made, along with earlier works in a physical exhibition at Shanghai University. They had gallery spaces, an amazing selection of AV equipment and I felt that having some sort of deadline to work towards would help to spur me on to finish things. As it turned out, there wasn’t the time or the space available at short notice to realise the physical presentation, although the university will present my work to their students as part of their course in the near future.
Initially, my aim of creating an online exhibition of the work was made as a backstop – a plan B. Less important than the physical presence of the work in a physical space. However I found the method of bringing the works together for the online show really useful for reflecting and contextualising what I had made in this intense period of time. Right now, I think that if I hadn’t done that reflection then, then it would have been sometime before I did it back home – what with the distractions of washing a month’s worth of clothes, working out what to cook, and whether I’ve bought Christmas presents for everyone.
What has really surprised me though, is the feedback that I have got from sending the online exhibition out to my mailing list. I’ve had people reply to my invite to this ‘exhibition’ with their responses to the work. It’s only a handful of people, and they are the people who I have an existing critical dialogue with, but it has felt as though people have taken the time to view what is essentially just a series of website pages, as a coherent exhibition – they have visited in the mindset that they might visit a physical gallery.
The idea to create a solely online exhibition came out of the work that I’ve been doing with POST (www.postliverpool.com). Our current project TRADING STATION was established to investigate whether creating a virtual/physical cross-continental artist exchange fitted better with the complex family lives and artistic practice that its members have. Through that project, we have tried to use online technologies to communicate the work, physical exhibitions and a series of newspapers that can be sent around the world cheaply. I think that the online technologies for communication and sharing in that project have been a bit hit and miss, but the combination of physical work, printed publication and the ability to share that publication online easily have been successful.
It is here that I refer back to the quote about the International New Media Gallery. About how they see an internet gallery operating alongside a physical gallery. TRADING STATION had the physical exhibition, but I feel that the physical publication reached more people due to it’s mailability. Before leaving for Shanghai, I created a catalogue of works from the previous 2 years. A way of visually describing what I do, and a calling card to leave with people that I met. I’ve been mailing out the catalogue, along with the online gallery link to people both at home and in Shanghai. I’m hoping that this combined approach will generate further feedback from contacts, both known and speculative.
