Contested Ground is described as a curatorial investigation. Just under 30 curating students from Goldsmith’s College and the Royal Collage of Art are working with and against each other in order to satisfy their own interests. The sheer number of curators working with the restrictions of time and space offers the possibility of miscommunication, friction and a warren of aims posited in a multitude of mediums. As suggested by the title Contested Ground, the result of such healthy negotiation may allow for the production of the unforeseen. Here, disorder from order is being celebrated. However, this activity cannot avoid centring importance on the curatorial manoeuvrings. This may allow something more interesting to be overshadowed- the exhibition contents - the things and their own contest.
Gareth Bell-Jones (RCA) and Dominic Rich (Goldsmiths) find this aspect more interesting. Therefore they have proposed Objectophilia, an exhibition integrated amongst others and within another that invites those reading to consider the forces that play between the chosen artworks. Further, the reader is asked to contemplate the artworks’ resistance to framing and speculate to what they may irrespectively, hold and emit. After all the artworks will always offer excess to the numerous framings in which they are placed.
This exhibition is made visible only to those who read this text. For those who are not reading there is no reason to assume that an exhibition has been dispersed into and as part of Contested Ground. Although it could be argued that the most objectophilic thing to do would be to stay mute and allow the artworks to speak for themselves and to argue amongst each other. The answer to this begins simply with the fact that artworks literally cannot speak of their opinions. A true objectophile however, has to say something even if it is as brief and hidden as this. It is beyond obvious to say that artworks do not give birth to other works. Rather a person produces them, say an artist who grapples with material, circumstances, ideas and intentions. To stay mute would be to ignore these factors.
Accordingly, we have chosen work by artists who are model objectophiles; artists who make art to lead their thinking rather than illustrate it. Below are some brief statements developed in conversations with the artists. Hopefully they offer practical information about the individual artworks and the artists’ aims. As for their relation to each other, those reading should decide.
Forth Worth by Simona Brinkman consists of a culminating number of black ‘leather sandbags’. Every time they are exhibited they gain in number and change formation in response to their new environment. The use of sandbags denotes a desire to protect from wars or floods. It also suggests a level of preparation against such possibilities. Yet it was created with no such preparation in mind. Its black leather coverings testify to where it is destined - a gallery. It has been distanced from its original associations. So what is Forth Worth defending? What boundaries have been demarcated? And what are the implications of this ever-growing structure. This will be the 5th exhibition of Forth Worth and includes 51 sand bags.
Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, by George Charman. George Charman wishes to blur imagined space with real structure. Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, are both studies on perceptual disruption of the whole or image/object in space. The presence they convey through light, shadow and reflection, denotes both the essence of their falsehood and the solidity of their existence. These polarities are reflected in the void space that both supports and is framed by the arrangements.
This Sense of Togetherness (Without you I am nothing) by David Raymond Conroy explores the conundrum that art objects might be “… either more than they appear to be, or maybe more accurately more than they are because of how they appear”. Situated in this distance between material ephemera and mythical absolute, Conroy’s work presses upon the fragility of how a set of events, objects or positions can potentially transform into a political gesture, a spiritual presence or a romantic fragment.
Cthonic Harmonic by Andrew Hewish is a white, wooden sculpture/ornament inspired by architectural folly, observations of Venice's encrusted architectural aspect and that city's historical fascination with Capriccio form. Hewish sees it as a ‘koan’; a nonsensical or paradoxical question that demands an answer, the stress of its contemplation offering alternative illuminations. Hewish sees this koan quality as the bastion of stability that enables the form's generation and continuity. Cthonic Harmonic is part of Hewish’s ongoing enquiry into the nature of sculpture as stage object; how far do its formal qualities assure its presence, and how do these qualities intersect with the object's theatrical framing?
Rail, by Benjamin Jenner is a peculiar wooden gate-like structure on wheels. Like Forth Worth it performs the division of space. Like a gate, it marks a puncture in a boundary, sitting on a line between included and excluded. It indicates power tensions without disclosing cause. The wheels playfully suggest the gates ability to shift, in space where included and excluded has not been defined.
Affair at Styles (pink & blue) and High Steel by Kate Owens deals directly with materials and their properties. Affair at Styles (pink and blue) uses soft drink staining as tie-dye and the polythene of High Steel is held on the wall with its own pure static. Owens uses these two processes – staining and the static of bin liners – associated with the material yet normally minor irritants, to transform the materials themselves. As such, by making as few alterations to the original material as possible the beauty of these natural phenomena are revealed.
Untitled (Third Cut), by James Porter can be described as part of his ongoing examination into the duration and production of practice in which there lays a compulsion to make but avoid certainty. His artworks are often evidence of their own making, a culmination of unintended residue. Untitled (Third Cut) barely stands as a broken plinth accompanied with economically poetic texts that hint at the demise of practice.
Advanced Military Layers, by Ben Washington is a proportionately accurate paper model of Mount Fuji that seemingly hovers above the table it was made on. The title refers to a NASA computer program that contains detailed information about the Earth’s terrain. Washington stated, “All of this satellite data technology was developed by the army to kill people, but then you’ve got Mt Fuji which is just a perfect mountain.” This piece addresses the ways in which a landscape transfers and takes on meaning when represented as an object and the consequent clashes of history, narrative and layers of “visual noise”. It aims to add to the confusion, appealing to mystery.
Gareth Bell-Jones (RCA) and Dominic Rich (Goldsmiths) find this aspect more interesting. Therefore they have proposed Objectophilia, an exhibition integrated amongst others and within another that invites those reading to consider the forces that play between the chosen artworks. Further, the reader is asked to contemplate the artworks’ resistance to framing and speculate to what they may irrespectively, hold and emit. After all the artworks will always offer excess to the numerous framings in which they are placed.
This exhibition is made visible only to those who read this text. For those who are not reading there is no reason to assume that an exhibition has been dispersed into and as part of Contested Ground. Although it could be argued that the most objectophilic thing to do would be to stay mute and allow the artworks to speak for themselves and to argue amongst each other. The answer to this begins simply with the fact that artworks literally cannot speak of their opinions. A true objectophile however, has to say something even if it is as brief and hidden as this. It is beyond obvious to say that artworks do not give birth to other works. Rather a person produces them, say an artist who grapples with material, circumstances, ideas and intentions. To stay mute would be to ignore these factors.
Accordingly, we have chosen work by artists who are model objectophiles; artists who make art to lead their thinking rather than illustrate it. Below are some brief statements developed in conversations with the artists. Hopefully they offer practical information about the individual artworks and the artists’ aims. As for their relation to each other, those reading should decide.
Forth Worth by Simona Brinkman consists of a culminating number of black ‘leather sandbags’. Every time they are exhibited they gain in number and change formation in response to their new environment. The use of sandbags denotes a desire to protect from wars or floods. It also suggests a level of preparation against such possibilities. Yet it was created with no such preparation in mind. Its black leather coverings testify to where it is destined - a gallery. It has been distanced from its original associations. So what is Forth Worth defending? What boundaries have been demarcated? And what are the implications of this ever-growing structure. This will be the 5th exhibition of Forth Worth and includes 51 sand bags.
Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, by George Charman. George Charman wishes to blur imagined space with real structure. Mirror 5 support and Mirror 6 support, are both studies on perceptual disruption of the whole or image/object in space. The presence they convey through light, shadow and reflection, denotes both the essence of their falsehood and the solidity of their existence. These polarities are reflected in the void space that both supports and is framed by the arrangements.
This Sense of Togetherness (Without you I am nothing) by David Raymond Conroy explores the conundrum that art objects might be “… either more than they appear to be, or maybe more accurately more than they are because of how they appear”. Situated in this distance between material ephemera and mythical absolute, Conroy’s work presses upon the fragility of how a set of events, objects or positions can potentially transform into a political gesture, a spiritual presence or a romantic fragment.
Cthonic Harmonic by Andrew Hewish is a white, wooden sculpture/ornament inspired by architectural folly, observations of Venice's encrusted architectural aspect and that city's historical fascination with Capriccio form. Hewish sees it as a ‘koan’; a nonsensical or paradoxical question that demands an answer, the stress of its contemplation offering alternative illuminations. Hewish sees this koan quality as the bastion of stability that enables the form's generation and continuity. Cthonic Harmonic is part of Hewish’s ongoing enquiry into the nature of sculpture as stage object; how far do its formal qualities assure its presence, and how do these qualities intersect with the object's theatrical framing?
Rail, by Benjamin Jenner is a peculiar wooden gate-like structure on wheels. Like Forth Worth it performs the division of space. Like a gate, it marks a puncture in a boundary, sitting on a line between included and excluded. It indicates power tensions without disclosing cause. The wheels playfully suggest the gates ability to shift, in space where included and excluded has not been defined.
Affair at Styles (pink & blue) and High Steel by Kate Owens deals directly with materials and their properties. Affair at Styles (pink and blue) uses soft drink staining as tie-dye and the polythene of High Steel is held on the wall with its own pure static. Owens uses these two processes – staining and the static of bin liners – associated with the material yet normally minor irritants, to transform the materials themselves. As such, by making as few alterations to the original material as possible the beauty of these natural phenomena are revealed.
Untitled (Third Cut), by James Porter can be described as part of his ongoing examination into the duration and production of practice in which there lays a compulsion to make but avoid certainty. His artworks are often evidence of their own making, a culmination of unintended residue. Untitled (Third Cut) barely stands as a broken plinth accompanied with economically poetic texts that hint at the demise of practice.
Advanced Military Layers, by Ben Washington is a proportionately accurate paper model of Mount Fuji that seemingly hovers above the table it was made on. The title refers to a NASA computer program that contains detailed information about the Earth’s terrain. Washington stated, “All of this satellite data technology was developed by the army to kill people, but then you’ve got Mt Fuji which is just a perfect mountain.” This piece addresses the ways in which a landscape transfers and takes on meaning when represented as an object and the consequent clashes of history, narrative and layers of “visual noise”. It aims to add to the confusion, appealing to mystery.
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