Teresa Solar Abboud - Tunnel Boring Machines

On first glance at these objects I was oddly uninterested. Despite their significant scale, contrasting natural and lurid colours, juxtaposition of handmade and synthetic elements, my brain just kind of went “oh yes, it’s art.” I was more interested in Franz West and Phyllida Barlow, whose work in this seemed to embody such a sense of threat and play. (A quick sidebar: the wall text claims that West’s Epiphanie an Stühlen (2011) is such fun; however to me it’s a kind of uniformly-coloured global nuclear war or virus, with absence evoked by two empty chairs - just because it’s pink doesn’t make it not disturbing.) By comparison, Abboud’s Tunnel Boring Machines seemed very ‘finished’ - somehow not requiring me to view them to be ‘completed’ (Eco, 1989.)

I attended the artist talk, though, and on second look my view completely changed. Abboud explained that collage was crucial to her process; a sense of removing hierarchies of scale, time and subject-matter, so that all elements have the same importance. In a collage she showed us, the elements were linked by the idea of ‘a sense of a mouth, that things are coming out of something,’ an equivalence is drawn as a ‘flower comes out of a worm out of a volcano out of a Wind God out of a shark.’

Combined with this is a particular approach to material. She says that she is somehow unable to escape the tactility and the metaphoric capacity of clay; primary among which are the strata and the underground, which we step on, extract, drill and cross every day - but generally remains unfathomable and unknown. Alongside this the synthetic material; weird fins, or surfboards, but also like lava, or some kind of language, or a disgusting anenome/worm. The clay ‘husk’ has these kind of oozing, hybrid limbs, which seem like some half-formed or aborted evolution, oddly contrasted with the extremely finished nature of their surface.

It is this resistance which on second look excites me. Through quite a convoluted set of processes, Abboud has come to a place where she is representing something which does not exist, but this real-imaginary thing is in the space with us. At the same time, its refusal to offer much at first of a way in relates to the artists’ concerns around the inaccessible nature of the totality of the ground, a human failure to grasp scale and duration, or to be able to accurately identify the common, real and significant. That it was possible for me to overlook a work which is - of course - also completely improbable and 75% a riot of colour - is testament to the idea that an opacity has been intentionally placed in the object.


There’s something about the title that appeals to me too, that perhaps it is kind of a ‘boring machine' (synonym, dull, uninteresting). It seems to imply that this explosion of colour is in fact totally commonplace, and normally overlooked, like a ground-orientated synesthesia. That might be a language gap accident, but that doesn’t matter because 1) its there anyway and 2) Abboud reveals that this work secretly began in language and clay in the first place.


I want to draw a direct parallel here between my unit two work Fugitive and these Tunnel Boring Machines. In Deadpan, Tina Post describes inexpression as ‘fugitive and opaque… potentially duplicitous.’ When we think about artworks that are inexpressive, and about resistance, firstly we aren’t talking about anti-art, which is a kind of negation, but about ‘showing up to not show up,’ (Pope L.). I have described these machines as ‘opaque’ several times - but they are somehow not fugitive, but more like, exhumed. I feel that my work is somehow fugitive - but I think the direct body things like legs and tongues, and the movement - make it somehow not opaque. Both are hollow - but mine as if it perhaps is waiting to relate, while Abboud’s is somehow not relational, while being responsive; like touching a slug; perhaps mine is somehow not responsive? Both have grey centres with primary-coloured body protrusions. Neither are truly inexpressive either, of course, but have a central ambiguous form; to repeat a line from my critical reflection, they are both ‘giving resistance.’


***


Finally, in conclusion to my contexts: there’s an interesting set of choices here. Two of the works chosen have quite a bit of ‘concrete’ forming the ground of their display, while the third is directly to do with the ground, drilling and construction. All three reference very material-led materials (and their difference cathexes - whether something is crafted or something is made - serious or playful). Fathi features a body, Abboud evokes an imaginary body, Hardy evokes the presence and absence of a specific body - hers. In Abboud - like in my legs and undersides - there is the overlooked parts of the body, and kind of inexpressive collage combined with an expressive, ‘undermining’ bold colour. Hardy uses a sense of storytelling through the relationship and association between objects. Fathi’s research objects encourage the haptic, the transitional and the direct.

The relationship between different artists’ work and concerns and one’s own are rarely one-to-one; nevertheless clearly they are defining an area of interest and expertise within my practice and within a sculptural context: about bodies, the ground, storytelling, undermining; deadpan, inexpression, frustration; which hopefully still coalesce into a generous body of work. Ralph Rugoff commented at the end of Abboud's talk that ‘forms can come alive when they are not specific’ (t=21m53s), but I fully expect that he means they should be in specific relationship - just not 'giving’ any specific one, only.



First published April 2024

On view at Strange Clay, Hayward Gallery, Spring 2024

bib.

https://www.teresolar.com/BIG-MOUTH-WITHIN-BOUNDARIES-OOZING-OUT-2021 (online) accessed May 2024

https://www.teresolar.com/Venice-Biennale-Tunnel-Boring-Machine-2022 (online) accessed May 2024

Partial recording at: https://www.owenherbert.co.uk/journal-2/when-forms-come-alive (online) accessed May 2024 (recorded without consent, password-protected.)

Eco, U. The Politics of the Open Work (1989) qtd. in Participation (2006) Bishop, C., Whitechapel, London

Anne Hardy - Solar Tank

Survival Spell at Maureen Paley

I have a comment and a question.

This exhibition seems to propose itself as a propositional answer to a question, like: “How can you condense a Texas Land Art residency into a space the size of the Maureen Paley?”

Of course, if anyone can, Anne Hardy can. I know her mostly for her evocative post-digital landscapes, a similarity with Heather Philipson, which I first encountered in Manchester at British Art Show 9. These works are like big dreamy set-stages, for example Liquid Landscape (2018) has the sounds of the sea while the lights dim and fade with the waves; the whole ‘scene’ resets after about ten minutes, revealing the illusion. The ‘beach’ is made from shells, but also parts of fans and pewter-cast NOS canisters.

Anne Hardy, Liquid Landscape (2018) The Whitworth, Manchester, British Art Show 9

Second, a comment, possibly as an answer - this vitrine, which is not a vitrine, is great. To me, it avoids the closed-ness of a true ‘vitrine’ through its complexity. The ‘background’ evokes a landscape through mark-making. A halo of wire, surrounding a lit lightbulb, evokes drawing, tumbleweed, things getting wrapped around axles. A small bundle of sticks, suspended, points to a process which is literally suspended. A coil of wire breaks the ‘screen’ poking through from below, drawing us in and making us more than a viewer. This ‘screen,’ between us and the ‘landscape’ is open on the sides, presenting a moment not vitrified, but with the air rushing in, and thus it is sort of ‘leaking,’ to the extent of an open window or draught. The light looks like the sun. In these abstract and minimal forms, various objects instead suggest themselves; windscreen wipers, a stray hair, the car aerial.

I think what Hardy has achieved here is like a tableau of different moments, which took place at different speeds, happening simultaneously in front of us. The vast shifting sands, the relentless beating of the sun, the wires and tumbleweed, the repetitous motions of the car coupled with its relentless progress forwards; sudden moments like a twig, or a spring, or a doink, are played out simultaneously. It has a truly meditative quality - I word I feel is overused when what is meant is ‘reflective’ or ‘stationary’. What meditation means is to do less than one normally does, drop back, and notice the simultaneous now-ness and the changing nature of every sensation, which we know as ‘things.’ That is, as your eyes move around Solar Tank, there again is the doink of that time the spring popped out of the dash - is it happening again, or a memory, a tiny trauma? Or maybe, did it only happen the once, in 500-miles of driving, but here has an equivalence with the entire mark-made landscape? And anyway I’ve imagined it, and someone else is very likely to see something totally different - that’s the strength of the work. And all the while the ‘sun’ beats down, and me and my companion stand mumbling to each other like we’re sitting looking out the front window of the bus, making the landscape with our eyes.

It reminds me simultaneously of John Latham’s quasi-didactic Time-base Roller (1972) and Emma Hart’s road signs (2022) from Banger and Strange Clay, particularly the way the fingers of the passenger in Green Light protrude beyond the ‘screen.’ The fact of its reliance on the wall through actually works in Solar Tank’s favour, making it just image-y and provisional enough to not be a confrontation.

“The new monuments are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries” Robert Morris writes in Entropy and the New Monuments. This sense of liveness is present in Solar Tank, nevertheless, as well as what is objective, abstract and literal, to me it is equally relatable, romantic, and involved with yawningly long time spans.

John Latham, Time-base Roller (1972)

Emma Hart, Green Light (front) (2018). Check out the fingers

First published April 2024

BIB.

https://www.maureenpaley.com/exhibitions/anne-hardy-survival-spell

https://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/anne-hardy?slideshow=19

 https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/entropy-and-new-monuments

Shirin Fathi - The Disobedient Nose

At The Cult of Beauty, Fathi’s photographic dyptich The Disobedient Nose was shown alongside interactable ‘research materials’ from the wider project. Nearby was a smallish gaudy, bruised painting about trans de-masculinising nose shaving cosmetic surgery, and on the other wall a large photograph of a Brazilian plastic surgeon preparing to perform a breast augmentation, he clothed in a lab coat while the patient/client/victim stands topless with scrubs around her waist. It was an uncomfortable corner.

Fathi’s portraits themselves draw on the conventions of historical figurative painting, portraiture, ‘sitting’, and in relation to gender; she seems to wear a loose baldcap along with the ruff in the left image, while being topless and apparently whitened with powder. In the right, in which she appear using more feminine (but not naked or nude) conventions, she looks away, out of the frame. The first does more for me, staring with something like the haughty gaze of a nobleman, but also possibly the challenge of Manet’s Olympia (1863) or the screen-test inexpression in Carey Young’s Appearance (2023). In all three, the sense of the sitter being subject - subjected to something, eg. the gaze - as well as the subject/object of interest is made complex by the sensation that the viewer’s gaze is returned (Young draws specific attention the mediating ‘character’ of the camera.) That this is not present in the right-hand image is still significant though; there is some sense of turning away in the combination which makes the left portrait less definitive.

The audio guide points out that the effect of referencing rhinoplasty, which relates to Iranian ‘beautification’ practices, is made with a flower petal. This tells us there is something temporary and staged about the sitting, while referencing the softness of the body and nodding again towards a traditional sense of ‘beauty.’

Most interesting, though, is the research objects which are presented alongside the two portraits. For these, Fathi has made casts of her own face from silicone, and then removed or manipulated the nose, re-stitching but not quite closing the hole. There is something like Frankenstein or Texas Chainsaw Massacre about this face, as an object. This part could be viewed as making the whole arrangement as an installation, or a mirroring of museum methods. For myself, I view them as transitional objects; as if the true research, change and knowledge takes place in Fathi in the very act of doing. To work into one’s own face must be to really confront and encounter something strange. It disrupts the sense of our being ‘behind the face’, bringing us also to our hands, eyes, posture etc. The fact that these are not presented as precious, but can be touched by the audience and thus kind of re-encountered, gives like a squidgy version of a static shock from the floor. Transitional objects

“do not reside largely in the fantasy life of the child but rather are actual objects - blankets, dolls - that function as psychic talismans - aids for easing anxiety, helping the child to sleep. Such objects, are nothing if not deeply familiar. … The transitional object is gradually allowed to be decathected, so that in the course of the years it becomes not so much forgotten as relegated to limbo. By this I mean, in health the transitional object does not "go inside" nor does the feeling necessarily undergo repression. It is not forgotten and it is not mourned. It loses meaning, and this is because transitional phenomena have become diffused, have become spread out over the whole intermediate territory between "inner psychic reality" and "the external world as perceived by two persons in common," that is to say over the whole cultural field."

Through these research objects we can conduct our own primary research into the inaccessible interiority and past of Fathi’s experience. What is shown in them is not ‘artwork’ but somehow the real work, or the practice, of investigating one’s own face in relation to the contextual concern. This simple, transitory, emotionally complex gesture makes the paintings seem like a research paper appendix version to the real thing: a final outcome or perhaps a form that lures you in through convention. The immediacy of the object, combined with the story, carries an enormous charge, while being less definitively ‘about’ any one thing.


First published April 2024

On view at Survival Spell, Maureen Paley, Spring 2024


Bib

Helen Molesworth, Duchamp by Hand, Even (2018) VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST

Critical reflection - first published January 2024

This essay addresses my journey in Unit 1. From dealing with ‘monumental’ sculpture at the start, to a more deconstructed notion towards the end. This long internal voyage has brought me back to more long-standing interests and inspirations, such as artist- and cross-disciplinary research in ‘non-art’ contexts. It deals with what has been learned and re-learned through objects and material processes along the way. It reflects on some of the successes and failures of studio practice. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities I have found in a technical expertise which I developed in between BA and MA: this is new and potent (as well as providing economic support) but also contains many pitfalls of its own. The alchemical process of folding this new-found ability into the service of an effective art practice, finding confidence in small gestures, and starting to find balance between these approaches, is the internal subject matter of Unit 1.

So, to the research project. In writing myself a brief about ‘monumentality’, I feel that I chose a subject-matter that is classically sculptural, weighty and ‘relevant’ (ie., close to social media and societal debate). In term one I understandably gravitated to a subject matter of sculpture at its most historically-bounded, which was a good way of locating myself firmly within subject on returning to art school, and of ensuring I was operating with a critical eye. Meanwhile, in the doing, daily practice and practical questions also introduced me to many technical staff and processes which were new to me. At times, though, I fell into a trap of trying to ‘make it work,’ in a workmanlike way. While this technical mode is a key economic skill and underpins much of minimalism within sculpture, it also contains dead-ends and traps. I feel I did not listen properly to objects, falling instead into a habit that labour would carry me through. By the end of the unit, though, I began to sense this issue, and drawing on Rebecca Moss’ workshop I hope that I was able to reflect on putting the strongest work forward in a way that is self-reflective, critical, but crucially puts the strongest work/image forward.

In the studio, my long-form project was an attempt to make objects which referenced and explicitly negated historical qualities, such as large, be-pedestalled and visual likenesses of political leaders, choosing instead making banal, re-arrangeable, repeated and textual objects. I used the name “Winston Churchill” as a shorthand for modernism and historical period, and a brick as the re-arrangeable unit. I also tried to make the bricks crafted objects, which were inherently useless due to being slip-cast. I was greatly influenced by Jennifer Allen’s comment in Sculpture Unlimited that monument ‘is a literary marker upon landscape.’ However, they retained a certain residual autonomy and handlibility which I had not forseen. In fact I had not been able to pre-empt several other factors, such as the speed of comprehension of text and image, the primary connotations of certain objects (in art contexts), and the statement that use of art materials makes.

On the technical side, I was very excited by the material process of slip-casting and glazing, which seems like magic, and slip-casting is obscene when you pour the claggy slip out of a bunghole to make it hollow. I found that ceramics require significant time investment and technical skill, as they almost always need to be done ‘a certain way,’ or at least, most problems have a limited range of practical choices to resolve, and this lead me to repeat the action many times in order to wrest minimalism out of the technical process.

On the whole I found that I struggled under the weight of this historical subject-matter, and that I was re-fighting old battles that had been partially jettisoned in the 1960s art, and which have faced a further spasm of general revision in recent years. There’s something about these objects in isolation that can be ‘got’, as in, even if they are baffling, they do not really hold attention or have many affective qualities, and most of our opinions on statues come from the context of statue-toppling, and social media, and protest. It was important to make a start, but in a bit of a rush to get started, I could have more carefully read the specific connotations of different objects, allowing for more ‘bottom up’ thinking, which would have encouraged more ambiguity - and intra-object cohesion - to come through. I learned that in selecting materials, we must pay careful attention to their own unique resonances, and the weight of art materials, and of text. This would probably be more obvious working with the readymade (discard, remain), while working with art materials we are working with form, which may or may not bear a resemblance. In defence of the project in general terms, though; at art school we may be surrounded by contemporary art, but ‘on the street’ we are still swamped with historical statues, and to go back to basics and address them again, in the contexts of artists who are not explicitly political, and who are in 2024, is a worthwhile endeavour. While little joy is found in assuming the whole weight of this task, and I must pay more attention to what moments in practice are so good that they are worth thoroughly investigating, my practice does benefit when it is public-facing and outward-looking, not bound by the studio.

Three finished bricks, base side

If I choose to trust the process here, it allowed me to ‘glimpse’ several promising avenues and important ideas in studio practice. Proceeding through irony, reading, technical skills, accidents and ‘what-it-isn’ts’ I was reintroduced to the complexities of how as an artist to inhabit several positions, in their totality but not at the same time; instigator, doer, and critic. One possible extension to me of these bricks is a wall of ‘british icons’, like the Spice Girls, Bridget Jones, David Attenborough and Joe Wickes, that have alluring, sweet-like glazes, something inedible and ungainly. At first glance, this is art in the mode of Jeremy Deller or Greyson Perry, but could perhaps also be inverted again by being a wall, ostentatiously in the way, or, hidden in a dark room.

Alongside this long-form project, I did have some studio successes: wrapping a brick in insulation tape which looks like the Union Flag was improbably successful due to its odd oscillation between threat and shitty repair. It is made stranger by the badness of the repair; we kind of want the decoration to be good, and it isn’t, and this bathos undermines the strength of the image and adds complexity. It also looks as if it wants to be thrown; this could be extended by making a ‘throwable’ brick out of rubber or something, or through a performance (or proposal, if not brave enough) work.

In Rebecca Moss’ workshop there was also something successful about aping the language of officialdom in public space. By working onto public infrastructure (fences, rails, benches) with shitty repair, there was the suggestion of decline or something public and non-functioning. It seems related to Jesse Darling’s Turner Prize exhibition but it distinctly different when it can be happened-upon, and must either be ephemeral or sturdy enough to survive being outdoors. Within sculpture, entropy sometimes presents us with a hard choice; do we respond to the fact that things degrade with materials that will last, or (since the 1960s) lean into ephemera, and integrate the ‘passing away’? The former is victim to fashion, the latter is a nightmare for conservators. One neat sidestep, of which Moss is a good example, is to use video. Video allows the artist to edit, to be a subject, and to show widely and easily; in contemporary sculpture, making objects at all is a choice. On the other hand, there’s something great about the fact that objects are a problem. As a rule-of-thumb, large things loom, small things make us feel clumsy, and human-scale objects confront. Object-artworks are expensive to make, and to move, take up space, require storage, degrade; they are a pain in the arse. But it’s not a bad thing for art objects to be crafted, difficult, even curmudgeonly - in fact it is probably sufficient subject-matter in itself. Therefore, it would be good if future works were not modular, but were committed one way or the other; ephemeral or lasting.

Forte, installation, Camberwell College of Arts, Nov. 2023

In late November, I had a cross-pathway crit. The comments on this work/situation revolved around the idea that this was a kind of post-punk party for the end of Britannia, while others said they became stuck, or baffled, by the presence of national symbols. For me it was a kind of self-portrait; a farewell to Britannia as an explicit subject-matter. Even though this was kind of a ‘minor’ and scrappy work, I felt I had found a confidence which was not rooted in technical ability but in innate and expanded notion of sculpture, a return to my BA creativity.

Leading up to this, what had happened is that I had decided to initiate a substantial revision of my brief, because I went back and read my original application to Camberwell, as well as having conversations with multiple artist friends who are familiar with my personality and practice over the last ten years. We also had a seminar from Leah Capaldi, who was my tutor on my BA. In conversations prior to Camberwell, I know that she is interested in artist-as-hero, placing practice on the hero’s journey. I believe that in her work it’s the moment of surrender/death/metamorphosis at the crux of the story which we see performed live in the gallery. I asked myself, in my practice, what moment on the hero’s journey would I choose to slow down and present?

I found a provisional answer in the idea of the departure and the return; absence and presence; ephemera and permanence; “fort. da.” This journey can be literal, in (eg.) Richard Long’s case, or internal and alchemical. Either way, this delicate kind of metamorphosis cannot be grasped while struggling under the weight of historically-loaded monuments, which speak primarily of narrative history, nation-making, and statue-toppling. I was also influenced by the idea of assemblage, and if I have found some way to be creative, one challenge will be to channel this into discreet objects, video or bodies of minor works.

PSQT logo modelling inter-disciplinary practice

In fact, my long-term interest in artist research is more generally about how a lively studio practice can foster collaboration, and be used as a point of departure and return into non-art subjects and spaces, fostering different kinds of inter-disciplinary learning and exchange. (A tight brief I view as being closer to professional practice, while this broad question is a unique opportunity loaned to the artist by the privileged position of an extended time in an academic context.) There are two contentious key terms in my thinking here; ‘collaboration’ and ‘non-art’. Broadly mapping onto these two terms, two key methods:

First is the ‘proposal form’ as a kind of collaboration. To me, the proposal is a way of setting a direction and intention from which the artist must immediately and inevitably deviate, or, exceptionally, follow as closely as possible as a kind of demonstration. Peter Liversidge is a good example of a practitioner who does this ‘solo,’ a collaboration between one moment and the next, or between himself and a gallery. Most, though, are partnerships who goad each other into Herculean target-setting; Jean-Claude & Christo, Cornford & Cross, Abramovic & Ulay; Iain Sinclair & Andrew Kotting, Anthony Gartland & Alex Pavely, Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty (KLF). The discrepancy between what is embarked on and what results could be characterised as kind of journey, or, as a reference to the compare-and-contrast of high conceptualism. This kind of collaboration takes place in process, dialogue and difficult creative friendship.

The second key method is informed by so-called ‘non-art.’ This could be at a site - for example, Hannah Soafer saw the potential for art to be the thing which holds space at Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust in order to bring together geology, architecture, heritage, craft and schools. Or, alternatively, the artist could embody this adventurous role themselves, such as Richard Wentworth, Allan Kaprow, Pilvi Takala and Joseph Beuys, going out and looking for ‘non-art’ things to act on and be acted upon by.

Creative friendship and Herculean target-setting…

Preparing for the pop-up show, I looked around and found I had - what? A glazed ceramic brick that says “We Won The War", about eight that say “Winston Churchill” still only at a bisque fire, some experiments with insulation tape, and some key words; celebration and residue, assemblage and installation; departure and return.

These concerns, through necessity, quickly sedimented into the two works in the pop-up show which finished the term. Vanishing Cabinet is a minor video work/installation, influenced by ‘celebration,’ with some sleight-of-hand emerging in the editing process. With some bigger production values, eg. a hotel lobby, a bespoke soundtrack and some things to make it stranger (a lift full of balloons or an employed drunk crowd), this is one of those situations where I would advise myself to ‘follow the thread wherever it leads.’

The second work, Lingering, brought crafted and found objects together in a assemblage, influenced by ‘residue.’ Something about cloyingness, and accident, and care, seemed to be the focus of audience comments, and it was generally felt to be quite finished, if again, small, scrappy and temporary.

The Vanishing Cabinet (2023)

The kind of embedded practices embodied by eg. Latham/APG, Sofaer/PSQT, Christo & Jean-Claude, are ‘small-p’ political, in contrast to my early Unit 1 tilting-at-windmills attempt to take on Britannia. Instead, these practices interact with politics, requiring knowledge of how and where to work with and against societal structure, in order to do, reveal, or get what you want.

In the next unit, I intend to strike a balance between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ thinking. There are some emergent promising threads from studio practice, like lifts, assemblage, craft, ingestion. The bricks want to be multiple other things; minimalist line, box of tissues, body fat, throwable vandalism object. Some of the making blocks from the casting process suggest obstructive works of their own. The lifts want to be extended into a stranger, if not longer, film. At least half of the practice should come from here, to balance against intellectual excitement: small-p politics, gates, permission, departure and return; problems of showing. It is also very important that some of these start to be outside of the studio, such as obstructive sculptures that require us to move. Where possible they should also be outside the gallery as well; my practice is not one that would happen under-the-bed, but is outward-looking and intended to be encountered and discursive - for which I will need to develop a thick skin.

Illustrating ‘bottom up’ thinking - these remains suggest an obstinate, roadblock style artwork


In the medium-term I would like to add the additional challenge of organising some external ‘non-art’ placements. This should hopefully allow me to start to test even further beyond subject with a sense of collaboration and exchange. This is about finding a balance and testing what an expanded idea of what practice might be, which should inform and invigorate studio practice. I do need to manage the time carefully, though, as the course structure probably favours doing this between July-December ‘24. This is because in the long-term, I see myself primarily as a commission-, research- and residency-based artist, not a studio practitioner. However, I have also found that my growing studio practice is a welcome antidote to the draw of the technical, and so is in some ways where the ‘real work’ takes place.

As well as the complex framing, going forward some of the important questions are also going to be dumb ones. How is it going to stand up? Where is it going to be? How big is it? What orientation? Or - how long is it going to go on for? How much is it going to cost? Treated with excitement and care and sensitivity, even if the intention is to be upsetting (that’s allowed), negotating permision, non-art exchange, appearance and disppearance, small-p politics and curmudgeonly objects are likely to be the kind of subject-matter going forward.


Bib.:

Waste to Monument: John Latham’s Niddrie Woman, Tate [online] accessible at: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/17/waste-to-monument-john-lathams-niddrie-woman [accessed 02.01.2024]

The Politics of Christo and Jean-Claude’s Running Fence, Artforum [online] accessible at : https://www.artforum.com/columns/the-politics-of-christo-and-jeanne-claudes-running-fence-233313/ [accessed 02.01.2024]

“Fort. Da.” Freud, S., quoted in Phelan, P. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1996), Routledge, London. Afterword [online] accessible at: https://www.routledge.com/Unmarked-The-Politics-of-Performance/Phelan/p/book/9780415068222 [accessed 14.12.23]

Grubinger, E., Heiser, J., (et. al) Eds. Sculpture Unlimited (2011) Stenberg Press, London. Allan, J. Asocial Sculpture pg.43. [online] acessible at: https://www.owenherbert.co.uk/journal/sculpture-unlimited [accessed 09.01.2024]