I keep another blog through tumblr which up until now has been about the issues I have faced with my practice and what I am doing leading up to our degree show. I find blog writing a really useful way to sort through ideas in my head and articulate what I am trying to do.
My next couple of entries on here, as well as the two previous entries are intended to get this blog up-to-date with my tumblr blog. I will then keep them fairly similar, though with more emphasis on issues relating to our degree show on here.
Talking of degree shows, we have yet to have a proper meeting about ours, hopefully they will start next week!
That people are willing to become participants to installations such as Blind Room, that are disorientating and create feelings of panic or fear, shows the power of the gallery space on the actions of the spectator. Would you, for example, go in to a pitch black room if someone asked you to anywhere other than a gallery? If someone on the street said, hey come and have a look in this room where you can’t see anything, you probably wouldn’t go in. Maybe that’s a slightly unfair way to put it, but you would perhaps be less likely to do something like that in a public space than in a gallery space. Is this because you go to a gallery expecting to be asked to do things that evoke certain emotions, and it is after all in a gallery so it must be safe.
There is a type of social-cultural contract within a gallery, within most spaces, that tells us how we must act. Martin Creed’s piece at the Tate Britain with runners sprinting up and down the main hallway, showed something of how we expect people to act within a gallery.
I am still trying to decide where to go next with my art practice. I like the idea of challenging our notions of what could go on in a gallery space but I think that this moves away from what I want to concentrate on more; the spectator as a medium for making art.
Edit- 28/2/12
After writing this I worked on some ideas for a maze installation within our studios. I never wrote an entry about it as ideas about gallery space took over and I never actually made the installation. What I did make were models of what I would’ve made. The maze would have had arrows on the walls, with the idea that those entering would follow the arrows without realising that they led them in a circle. I was also planning on using changing lighting to disorientate the visitor and make it harder to tell that they had been in the space already. Pictured is the model that I would’ve created in life-size had other things not taken over.
Last term for our interim presentations I experimented with installation. Blind Room was the result. At the time I had been looking a lot at the control of the artist over the spectator with works that require a more active role from the spectator. This is what I wrote my dissertation about.
The interior of Blind Room was completely devoid of light rendering sight useless within the space. This means that the audience must rely upon their sense of touch to guide them as they grope around the space. The lack of any light means that the atmosphere of the space instantly becomes ominous and removes the audience from a comfortable situation. Structures built within the space cause it to be harder to navigate and find your way around. There is no way to regain your sense of sight within the space, you must leave the space to be able to see again. There is a growing desire to leave the space, the longer you are in it, and difficulty finding your way out increases this desire. When you have left the space it is a relief though the harshness of the light from the studio is dazzling.
Inside Blind Room on the second day. Bits of light began to appear as the cardboard came away from the windows. The brighter weather also meant the light that came through was stronger than the day before. It was still dark enough within the room that when facing away from the source of light you could not see anything.
I have since moved away from creating installations and as mentioned in my blog intro, have begun to look at the nature of the gallery space.
