barren – uncertain furniture
Day 3
The idea of gallery as studio is not new particularly when workshops and work in progress etc are the substance of the crossover between studio and gallery. However the question of studio also reaches the laptop of which I have found I can’t be without whilst in the gallery. Images, research and projecting from it seem essential. The open sources nature verifies that the studio in many ways is always open. I am not able to confine myself to one activity the whole time and moving between those ideas of experiment, production, storage, throwaways and distribution punctuated by reading and thinking make the nature of the studio a constant go between. The gallery is at odds in terms that it appears to be a final resting place, however in this residency I am working within the gallery surrounded by so called resolved work and I’m busy undoing solving it and using it to proceed on new lines.
This idea of gallery as studio does not appear to present new forms of production or react against conventions but probably rests as an expanding cultural idea where production and post production of art occurs in ever simultaneous, transient ways and in ever ranging venues, places. What is apparent is that the notion of studio and display are under constant construction and the painting or aestheticising of all places, culturally, is occurring.
Residing in the space constitutes construction not just in the process of working but also in the process of constructing thoughts. I have identified old patterns of thought which now appear redundant and the space gives an uneasy challenge to let go of preconceived ideas and remaining in the balance of uncertainty. On that note it is apparent that the work here requires an uncertainty as it neither wishes to be monumental in the name of architecture but wants to expose the fragility of the body through architecture. Perhaps that is my best understanding for the moment.
The whole space as Perec comments is organized around furniture – we find this in most instances and the gallery space is constructed no differently and furniture does appear to obscure much of the space we inhabit. The space offers scale, dimension and support to the constructed identities of furniture. I have been literally inscribing furniture but it is no different to what occurs in our inscription of surfaces and pieces with anecdotes, placing next to ornaments and positioning; selecting from time frames in order to construct an identity. My aversion to many spaces is from a deep desire to take an arm and sweep so much of this aside yet here I am inscribing. It is a space which is slowly moving from uninhabitable to inhabited. Despite this the set or scene of the gallery while moving has an air of being untouched and intangible I’m not sure if this is to do with that church like air galleries conjure and they do not touch or whether the work offers a an uncertain, fragile touch of intangibility between architecture and furniture – I would like to think the latter is what it will become. Perec (Species of Spaces; Pg91) desired the paradoxical nature of wanting spaces that were stable, untouched, unchanging but also intangible as points of reference and departure. In my state of sitting in the middle of the space I hope that this body of work begins to reference spaces whilst offering a point of departure.
