Blog post regarding ‘Working Title’ exhibition at aspex gallery.
It isn’t hard to notice, as I spend time amongst these artists, that a lot of experimentation happens viscerally, perhaps much like an instinct. The making/assembling/creating process seems to speed along, an idea is had and an idea is followed through almost instantly, as if too much time spent pondering will ruin the piece before it has begun.
All this talk of ‘quickness’ may suggest a lack of thought, but these instincts don’t occur uninformed. Every artist in Working Title has something to say (you can find out for yourself if you take a trip to the gallery.) I think perhaps it is easy to assume that everyday-objects assembled as art-objects are created with naivety, as they appear as ad-hoc creations, amusingly opposing their usual function, yet it is common that art of this process will have strong links to concept and a knowledge that it can ground itself in theory.
Reading about one of the artists involved in Working Title, Will Cruickshank, I came across a residency he was involved in organised by August art named ‘Institute for objective measurements‘. The artists explored ‘the balance between the desire to have the unknown explained factually, the unquantifiable measured accurately, and the need to just be fed something that ‘sounds right’. We want to be satisfied by a reason why, perhaps if what we see doesn’t satisfy us, then the reasoning behind it may connect the dots.
It is this playfulness with the need to rationalise things that leads me to explain my own need to try and rationalise Will’s artwork. He messes about with functionality, re-assembling unwanted goods, an old pool cue, an umbrella, and gives them a different purpose. I say purpose, as ‘use’ doesn’t fit, as although he creates objects that can be ‘used’, it is more the notion of them being ‘used’, and less a need for them to belong in the world out of necessity. ‘Function’ is described as ’the purpose for which something is designed or exists’, thus, creating a merry-go-round for Will’s work’s (having function- opposing function- giving function etc.)
I feel though, that the nature of making, the process in which the artists relate to the materials, supersedes the need to know why it is there. It is a case of an exploration into thinking, relating and translating the familiar into the unfamiliar, for both artist and viewer.
As Markus mentioned in a previous post ‘Kickstarting, fishing, participating’, questions are raised when viewing works such as the ones in Working Title. I believe this to be one of the most vital aspects regarding the everyday-in-art, continuously, there are questions to be asked, and they, perhaps, are more important than the answers.
