I’ve been thinking more about the tutorial I had with my tutor a couple of weeks ago and how she saw my floor plan ideas as one sided and felt that my gallery guide idea was the stronger of the two. At the time I felt it was the other way around. But going around the galleries and looking at the film that I shot at the national gallery I think that she was right. Gallery guides and maps are where most of this work started from, and the floor plans seem to be moving away from what it was that really interested me, the control of the visitor within the gallery.
What is clear from looking at the film I took in the national gallery is that I was trying to focus on people’s actions in the gallery rather than the layout of the rooms. It doesn’t help that for our degree show there is a very strong feeling that what we show our work in is our studio and not really a gallery space. As well as this, the space is a lot smaller than the spaces I have looked at in my research. The floor plans just won’t quite work as part of the degree show.
What I can use to show my ideas though is the gallery guide. That would not be so out of place in the show as a design alluding to an actual gallery where there is none. They also have far more in common with the work I have done at the beginning of my third year and throughout my degree. There is a degree of participation about them that my work, and my dissertation, has often focused on, and the floor plans do not.
As it is people’s actions in the gallery that interest me then instructions and guides seem the way forward. I have been looking at artists such as Yoko Ono and Erwin Wurm who have both used instructions in their work. I’m thinking of linking these guides with the idea of the gallery as a secure place. I have touched briefly upon this in past blog entries, describing it as a safe place where people feel comfortable to follow a stranger’s instructions.
