The ornaments, Newtown, Powys.

It was a glint of light that caught my eye that day, something on the ground reflecting the sun.

On the grave was a globe, similar to an upturned goldfish globe, covering an arrangement of flowers sculpted in ceramic.  A petrified world encapsulated under glass.

There were more, many undamaged, some broken with the ceramic blooms overtaken by their living counterparts.   I had wandered in this place often, yet never once noticed these memorials, now the flash of light had attuned my vision to their existence.

I have not seen these frozen floral tributes anywhere else.  Like rare fossils, these are perhaps the only surviving trace of a wider phenomena, the production of petrified bouquets as everlasting tributes.  Seen through the glass they are the floral equivalent of a taxidermy specimen.

What was once a memorial – a memory – that had to be endlessly renewed, each placing of flowers reinvigorating the contract with the deceased, that by this action memory is kept fresh and forgetting deferred – is in these ceramic blooms a memory frozen at the act of placing fresh flowers.

Un-decaying and everlasting, the brittle hardness replacing the organic inevitability of decay, these simple blooms stand at contrast to their context.  The memorials proper signal their status as constructs, they are signs and text, each element making reference to a nexus of beliefs.  There is no attempt at mimetic reproduction, the angel is not seen as truly there for all the attention to the biological detail of its wings.  The ceramic flowers seem to be something else, though there are numerous other representations of flora throughout the cemetery, stone vines climbing up broken pillars, bunches of flowers clutched by marble Madonnas.  It is both the quotidian nature of what is represented, the wreath of foliage, and the way it is presented.  The glass globe is there to protect, to place apart from the change that is inevitable. 

A workshop...

I have difficulty with curators.  Not, I hasten to add, on an individual basis, but with the prevailing over-importance (self-importance?) of ‘the curator’.  When I began to exhibit, and indeed to work, in public galleries there were few curators.  Instead there were exhibition officers, and this designation covered the remit to perfection by placing exhibition at the forefront.  Exhibition officers (and exhibition assistants) would be involved closely with the exhibition in both a conceptual and a physical manner, even going so far as to get their hands dirty, painting the walls or running out to purchase materials.

Now it seems as if everyone is a curator.  Artists are reduced to mere technicians, or to being an interesting presence in the bar, and any idea of engagement with the public has dissipated.  Curators hold seminars with other curators, with little need to discuss anything outside of the closed loop of those who read the orthodox texts.  I suppose this is a further example of the rise of the manager, which has seen the developed world (pause for ironic reflection) now awash with people whose main function is the sending of emails, the production of spreadsheets, the arranging of meetings.  A world whose inhabitants exist between Office and, on the way home, Candy Crush Saga.

Yes, curators are a necessary part of the art-world infrastructure, though when they were exhibition officers they were not imbued with the current god-like status.  Let us not forget that without artists there would be nothing to curate, and without the audience there would be no reason to curate.  But now there seems to be more curators and wannabe curators than anything else, and the complex relationships of art-world, space, contextual factors, and public engagement is overwhelmed.  There are endless symposia, while exhibitions become the illustration of curatorial texts.

I am, of course, envious.  Unable to match the intellectual rigour of the young curator I am assigned the role of the has-been, or maybe never-was, and must stand in the wings and watch the play you are playing, while my heart gently weeps.

Such is the fate of the producer of installations.

Something you lean on - musings on sculpture.

The following is the text of talk given at the Ju Ming Museum on October 3rd 2015.  The conference concerned sculpture, and so I decided to explore my problems with definitions of practice.

“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 19^th 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.