I am always curious to see how galleries hang my ipad work. Now for the second time recently two galleries (Delta Studios and Transmission) have chosen not to mention that the work is created on an ipad using Brushes app.
Yet it hangs alongside traditional work in both galleries where the method of creating it – etching, painting, drawing, mixed media or even digital is stated.
I think it reflects the dilemma galleries have when confronted with work made using new technologies: they still don’t know how to deal with it.
So they choose to ignore the method of production. This is a pity because I think this is the most innovative aspect of the work.
Anyway, the ipad work is now hanging in the annual members show at the Transmission gallery in Glasgow.
Every year I make a point of submitting work and over the years it has acted as a monitor of my developing artistic practice.
It started off before going to Glasgow School of Art with fun sculptures, and then it moved to video.
(One year the television set got stolen but then the Transmission is a very edgy gallery on the fringe of Glasgow’s East End).
Last year I submitted documentary photography portraying immigrant workers returning from Saudi.
This year it has a much lighter theme – my latest ipad work.
I was curious to see how they would hang it.
I gave no instructions instead asking them to decide themselves how they wanted to hang it given the space available.
Moreover I wanted to see what these recent graduates (for Transmission is run as a collective) would come up with for I knew it would be something original.
And they did. Brilliant.
They chose to exhibit it in a block of seven so the overall impression is that of a very large screen-print.
It works so well that it is a method I shall use myself in future. Of course in an ideal world it should be shown in a darkened room on rows of Ipads – that is what David Hockney did with his exhibition in Paris – but that of course is in a different league.
