“Something you lean on
while you look at the paintings.”
I will
begin with a joke, a possible definition of sculpture- sculpture is something
you lean on while you stand back to look at the paintings.
This joke,
in common with most humorous utterances, contains a germ of truth, and it is
the manner in which this joke makes important points not only about sculpture,
but also about art, that I wish to examine.
At the outset I have a problem,
for I find the term ‘sculpture’ problematic. I think it is no longer possible to easily define artworks,
and, although I recognize the usefulness of such definitions in certain
circumstances, splitting art into distinct areas plays against much of
contemporary practice.
There is, I contend, a wide field of objects and events that fit within
the definition ‘art’ , and within this field are objects that may be termed
‘sculpture’, but such terms, like the term ‘art’ itself, are fluid.
The problem
I have with definitions, with categories, stems not only from uncertainties
concerning easy or fixed definitions, but also from the baggage such terms
bring in their wake, and this is especially true when one is asked to define
oneself.
On the
landing card on my recent flight to Japan it asks for a definition of my role
(for we are all assigned roles these days, to enable us to be fitted into the
neat categories assigned by bureaucracy), and at this point I hesitate. Artist?
There is an
important point here, for even defining myself as an artist is something I do
reluctantly, and this stems from the great suitcase of ancillary meanings such
a definition carries. “Artist” too
often is a term that sets us apart, implying a “mortal who is beyond the
common herd of humanity, someone set apart and touched by genius” (or madness). On the contrary, I
think I (we) have just been lucky to have the chance to use our creativity in
the production of something. The particularities of my background produces such
thoughts. I am from a working-class family in Liverpool, and nearest thing to
an artist was my grandfather, who fixed old clocks. The fact that I am here,
that I make art, comes from being able to make use of certain (now destroyed)
opportunities. Much of what I do can be traced back to the influence of my
background, a love of small-scale construction for example, and this connection
to my working class upbringing is important, for it keeps me grounded. I hear my dad asking ‘what is that supposed to be?’
This
preamble should be kept in mind as I return to leaning on the sculpture while
looking at the paintings. What
drew me to this joke is the manner in which it can be used to examine certain
ideas about sculpture, and about art. Initially, the phrase can be seen as a
recognition that sculptures exist in the context of paintings (or the other way
around).
This
obvious observation can further be seen as a demonstration of the fact that all
artworks exist in a series of interrelationships to each other – no artwork is
produced, or exhibited, in total isolation, as if free-floating in a white
cube.
This series
of relationships between artworks can be seen as conceptual, and as physical.
Conceptual,
for the debates within the world of art (and there are many, from both critics
and practitioners) predominantly focus on the connections of the artist and
artwork to further conceptual, philosophical, and social dialogues, and these
debates are common to all art forms.
By this I mean to indicate that the debates, by their nature as
concerning ideas, shift across multiple artforms, so that, to take one example,
the concepts of the relationship with the environment will be addressed not
only in the visual arts, but in multiple artistic productions (for example,
music). The issues that are addressed are no longer concerned with the specific
possibilities of media or techniques.
To define
an art practice by media is to reduce the possibilities of the practice to mere
technology, as if sculpture could be defined by categories such as ‘drill
driver’, rather than to see art as an overall concept (a diffuse concept) that
is part of the wider national and international cultural nexus.
And this
can extend further, to bring in philosophy, science. In my own practice I cite
poetry, philosophy, architecture, literature, film and music. And theatre….the idea that artforms are
‘pure’ is counter to all actual experience.
The
physical relationship between art-works within the space of an exhibition is
obvious, yet sometimes neglected.
To continue with the slight element of autobiography, I have worked in
museums and galleries as a technician, employed to install art of all
kinds. This physical engagement
with artworks, and with the various relationships between the artworks and the
space of exhibition, is where exhibitions are made (from the conceptual to the
actual).
To stand
back and lean on a sculpture while looking at the painting is to be an embodied
presence in the space of the exhibition, engaged with the spatial relationships
between the works of art and with all the contingent factors that are
involved.
The
relationships are often not only a matter of pure aesthetics, but a matter of
the down-to-earth physical, with what is possible within a given set of
parameters, from the dimensions of the space to what is can take place in that
space (I know of at least one exhibition where the layout of the works in the
gallery was dictated by the load-bearing properties of the gallery floor). And then there is light…
This
relationship to the space of exhibition is, obviously, a relationship to
architecture, and to the multiple meanings and connections of the
architectonic. Exhibition spaces
now range from the purpose built museum and gallery, to the temporary site that
retains the trace of its former incarnation. Each of these contexts proposes both a physical and a
further conceptual set of parameters for the works, and the relationships
between the works.
It is
commonplace to recognise the ‘white cube’ as a space laden with meaning,
including the fiction of the neutrality of such a space, yet it is easy to
forget how this works, and to be seduced by the need to make all spaces follow
this model. Too often I think
buildings are ‘gallery-fied’, and lose the specifics that can make them a site that
proposes different ways of thinking about the possible.
We can
utilise this connection of the art-work to the architectonic to see how this
ties art further into the network of connections, for each exhibition space,
each manifestation of the ‘exhibitionary complex’ (to steal a term from museology)
is in the site of the city (though there are exceptions, but the model holds
good), and as components of the built environment are part of the
pyschogeographical experience of the city, the multiple meanings that are part
of our personal experience of the urban.
The
dialogue between this experience (or set of experiences) and the artwork is a
crucial part of the meaning of the work.
A pertinent example of this was Ghost by Rachel Whiteread.
The first
exhibition of this work was in the Chisenhale Gallery, which is sited in an
area of London that, at that time, comprised streets of run-down housing from
the 19th century and earlier, the same kind of housing where the
cast of the room that formed Ghost had been taken.
The encounter with the cast of one of the many rooms in the surrounding
streets affected how the viewer subsequently regarded the houses, each house
now being imbued with the further ghost of the solidification of the interior
space, a fossilisation of the memory of those who had breathed in that
space. These kinds of houses had a
pathos, inscribed with the hopes of those trying to make a living in the first
rise of the capitalisitic excess that would turn London into a site of
increasing social separation. House, the work that grew from Ghost, continued this connection. When you encounter Ghost in another
exhibition site (my next sighting of the work was in Sensation at the Royal
Academy) it has lost that relationship to immediate environment, and this turns
it into a nostalgic work, divorced from the ancillary meanings that gave it
power.
In the joke there is a further
element, an important presence in all of the foregoing. For the space of the exhibition, the
architecture and – importantly – the artworks themselves, all exist in relationship
to that singular yet multiple person, that mix of adults, children, mothers and
fathers, artists, curators, workers, that is all of us, the public, who
encounter art in all of its forms.
The viewer, the audience.
And without
this viewer, there could be no art….for if no one encounters a work of art, if
it stays in the studio, then it is only a proposal towards a work of art. Art is a form of communication, a
dialogue that opens up possibilities and proposes questions, and this always
has to be in the context of an audience, otherwise we are shouting our ideas
into the void.
The viewer
leaning on the sculpture (and trying not to trip up and fall through a
painting) is the important part of the equation, this viewer who is, perhaps,
wondering about what she is encountering.
This brings in further ideas of context, of how any artwork is not only
in a network of relationships to other artforms, to the exhibition site and the
further sites of the city, but also to the people (the public) who are involved
in the dialogue with the work, for art is always a dialogue, never the
imposition of a singular viewpoint.
One of the
most important developments within art, within sculpture especially, is the
widening of the possibilities of what can be utilised as material within the
work, and of what techniques are employed. This opening out, a shift away from materials that could
once be seen to symbolise ‘Art’, has been crucially important for the
development of my practice. In the
UK I would haunt do-it-yourself stores, or read builders catalogues, or explore
flea markets.
Here, in
Taiwan, it is so much easier…for materials exist in abundance.
And not only have the
boundaries of the possible been disrupted, so that sculpture can run the gamut
from the found object subject to minimal intervention that discovers its poetic
possibilities
to the use
of materials that carry a critique of assumption concerning feminine crafts,
via the act of mapping and walking as art, to the concept of the ‘life as
sculpture’, but equally (and following from the above) the everyday is
inscribed with the possibility of being art. This possibility is all around us, for it is a matter of
re-cognition, of seeing anew.
This,
however, is not something that happens purely in one direction, that the
‘artist’ takes things from the world and places them upon a (conceptual of
actual) pedestal. The process is a
dialogue, so that the utilisation of standard construction techniques in the
production of a sculpture or an installation is also a way of increasing
communication with the viewer(s).
Art is seen
as an activity – a way of thinking - that uses the quotidian, the everyday, the
recognisable, in a creative (or eccentric) way. It is only the recognition of the inherent possibilities,
the possibilities of challenging the accepted, that places the artist in a
slightly different position (not necessarily any notion of genius).
One important point that
follows from this is that the viewer does not need to have artworks ‘explained’
– subject to an official view as to the meaning of the work, as if there is
ever a single definable, closed-down explanation to any artwork. The viewer recognises a connection in
the artworks to the everyday world we inhabit and know (a world that is
anything but ‘everyday’ in its possibilities). The use of the everyday becomes a key that enables the
viewer to begin the engagement with the artwork – and where that leads will
depend on the knowledge and experiences the viewer brings to the dialogue.
All of this
involves a recognition of the creativity of the commonplace, that is that ways
of thinking and doing are inscribed with creativity. Here in Taiwan I encounter on a daily basis things that
exhibit both accidental – or maybe subconscious – creativity (poetry) and surprising
combinations. By recognising the
importance of the found/chance encounter, it is possible to raise questions
over the nature of art itself, seeing art as not something special – and
thereby only fit to be the subject of speculative collection and consumption –
but as an inherent and necessary part of being human.
Let me cite
two examples. Both exhibit the
creativity of the commonplace, yet paradoxically both are anything but
‘commonplace’, for they slip beyond the mundane to become something strangely
creative. The first is the ‘road
robot’, a manufactured item whose uncanny qualities can be overlooked (though
perhaps, as with the appearance of the ghost in bright sunlight in the film of
“Turn of the Screw”, it is the unexpected visibility that makes us wish to not
see). This is a truly unsettling
thing, for anywhere else it would just be a flashing sign, but here it is a
presence, a population of androids….It is not necessary to indulge in the tactic
of the found object (imagine filling a room in Taipei Fine Art Museum with 500
of these beings, the animism of the road sign), for it is the encounter with
the robots in the site of the city that is important, as if the tableaux of
Kienholz had expanded and fragmented, and the whole city become the
artwork. I know that the reason
underlying the existence of these – beings - is financial, yet it is that leap
from the need to provide a road sign, to producing the sign as a figure, where
the creativity lies, and then the further creative steps in how each one
becomes individualised.
In the
spaces of the city are many further examples of unnoticed creativity, of
accidental encounters.
There is a
shop interior in Tainan, a sewing machine shop. Yet the manner in which the sewing machines are displayed,
each in its own vitrine, turning each into something akin to a specimen in a
museum, that produces a shock of dis-recognition. The accidental encounter in a commercial establishment of
a sewing machine and a museum display cabinet, to misquote Lautreamont. This is one of the many ‘found installations’ I have – found
– in wanders around the cities of Taiwan (the consequence of being without a
scooter, and being English, and thereby
prone to wandering – going for a stroll).
Wandering
the city – going for a stroll, allowing psychogeography to take hold, is not
only to discover and recognise that the ways things are combined has an
aesthetic interest (and maybe raises questions over the notion of the
aesthetic), but also means that the layers of history within the city can be
discerned. It is still possible to
discover fragments and ruins, still-used structures and the recently abandoned,
in a wander in Taipei. The city is
a palimpsest, and the continuing exploration of this is important, for it is a
constantly changing site, and things once lost can never be recovered. Maybe we can think of this in terms of
art, of the city as a complete ‘found installation’, allowing the construction
of multiple narratives that disrupt a single (officially sanctioned) reading. Ignore the monuments (except when
dancing) and go down the side streets.
This is the
importance of the viewer, for she is free to re-think at every turn, to see art
as something that connects to the world she knows. In a sense the viewer becomes free to make the artwork by
the wander around the city, being alive to the chance discovery.
There is a
difficulty here, for one of the reasons why people feel uncomfortable with art
is that there is often a misunderstanding concerning its function. My view is that, at its core, art
exists to raise questions (and not to provide answers), to raise multiple
questions over the perception of beauty, over the differences in culture, over
history and interpretation…and to do this in ways that are engaging, and so
that the experience is never reducible to singular narratives.
It is the
question over history, over what we think we know and how that is presented in
the spaces of the institutions, that is at stake. For one consequence of recognising the inherent creativity
in what is around us , from the everyday manner in which things are done, to
the poetry of the chance encounter (and the found installation), is to raise
questions over what counts as art, and what does not.
If you wish to have a salutary encounter
with how what is perceived as important changes, then go into the storage areas
of any large public art gallery in the UK, for there you will find racks of
paintings once considered prime examples of art. This in itself may only be of interest to a minority (ie,
us), but what further follows is a questioning of how all institutions make
decisions over what is considered the truth, and then present these decisions.
The
questioning, the dialogue, over what can be seen as art can therefore extend to
questioning the interpretation of history and memory, to questioning the
perceived importance of certain sites and how such sites are symbolised (for
example is a villa once lived in by a government official more important than a
house of a worker?), to questioning the current set of understandings and
thinking about the future. What
things currently regarded as disposable will eventually be seen as of
importance? In the relentless
drive for the new we could destroy our sense of who we are, and where we come from.
In the joke
one point could be that the sculpture is not seen as important, for it does not
fit into the category of art, a category reserved for painting. In some cases this is still the case,
as a wander around an art fair will demonstrate.
Contemporary
practice deals in no such simplistic distinctions, but continues to expand the
boundaries of the possible. This
is crucial, for interrogating the given is the most important thing we can all
do. Herein lies further creative
interrogation, for what do we question becomes part of the question as well.
