- Venue
- Aid & Abet
- Location
- East England
If I were severed from the truth by nothing else than this thin gauze –
And a divine decree, his guide broke in.
Far heavier than thou thinkest
Is this thin gauze, my son, Light to thy hand
It may be – but most weighty to thy conscience. 1
Forming the preface for conceptual artists Imi Knoebel’s 1991 catalogue, Freidrich Schiller’s poem The Veiled Image at Sais, is according to Lynn Cooke a very good ‘example of the ‘artists aesthetic’, 2 and exhibited in Knoebel’s seminal work Raum19, 1968. Consisting of over seventy different prefabricated parts in distinct utilitarian wood and fibreboard, Raum 19 prefigures ‘possibility’, as pieces such as stretchers and geometric volumes are assembled, stacked and propped.
Arranged uniquely each time it is shown, elements are either added or subtracted into a state of poise dependent on the gallery context and Knoebel’s impulse, emphasising the artist’s focus on ‘constructing an aesthetic totality’. 3
Raum 19’s eventual assemblage and driving concept of possibility could have easily been re-routed to Aid & Abets recent Exchange Event- Manual for Exhibition by Proxy (8th Oct).
Contributing toward the collective’s SPACE EXCHANGE, a series of projects centred around the theme ‘exchange’ and five artist-run spaces: Grand Union (Birmingham), Satellite (Eastern Regions), Spike Island (Bristol), The Royal Standard (Liverpool) and The Woodmill (London), Exchange Event is one of six events making up this multi-storey project as well as a selection of in-situ works at Aid & Abet’s space in Cambridge.
Working in conjunction with Bristol’s Spike Island Associates Manual for Exhibition by Proxy is essentially an exhibition by artists Sovay Berriman, Maia Conran, Hannah James Samuel Playford-Greenwell and Marie Toseland. Far from simple bubble-wrap revelry, Manual for Exhibition by Proxy involved the delivery from Bristol of a Manual to an appointed proxy (artist) at Aid & Abet, who completed the instructions held within the document (of which I was not privy to).
Sounded simple enough and from the actions witnessed wasn’t outside any dad’s grasp of basic DIY, though it didn’t seem execution was what this event sought to highlight, as the artist laboured in a corner of the workspace with her rudimentary lengths of 4″ x 2″, sterlingboard and basic toolkit, but more so issues raised from the occasion. Authorship, site-specificity, and categorisation of event/action, proxy/artist and thing/outcome were evoked, but I was more inclined to ask what practice did it extend and whose? Of which the answer proved indeterminate.
Although questions were raised by the works emanating debate ripples they were not entirely new. Ryan Gander’s Rietveld Reconstruction – Alex, aged six (2006) delved into similar territory of ‘interpretation’ and ‘potential’ consulting six year old boy Alex in the reconstruction of two easy chairs and one side board from Gerrit Rietveldt’s 1943 Crate series. More recently Angela De La Cruz’s 2010 Turner Prize nominated broken stretcher/sculpture’ works generated questions again on form and authorship, and only this Summer Tate St Ives saw Roman Ondak Measuring the Universe (2011) by leaving the work to the general public.
Spike Island and Aid & Abet may not necessarily unearth new territory in this project, but effectively compound our interest in truth, what determines truth, and its very comprehension. Knoebel’s works seriate in appearance and provocatively banal by nature tease us, providing areas for departure and possibility. Manual for Exhibition by Proxy likewise intrigues, making one focus on the veil of Schiller’s statue and the importance it plays in protecting us from apathy’s indolence, shielding us from the destructive force of truth like utopian gauze.
1Schiller F, “The Veiled Image at Sais”, 1795, in Imi Knoebel: Acht Portraits (Berlin, Galerie Fahnemann, 1991).
2 Cooke L, long-term view, Dia Art Foundation (2010) http://www.diaart.org/exhibitions/introduction/87
(accessed 15th Oct 2011).
3 (ibid)
