 |
| Context |
The work shares an association with the works of those who explore their own peculiar connections to a world in flux and specifically entertain a pallet of ephemera and urban detritus offering a tactile world of material things. There is also a strong connection with those who are working within the public domain, those working within communities, acting on their behalf after consultation or more significantly in conjunction with them, and those attempting to build new communities or bridges between socially diverse groups by highlighting their similarities.
|
|
Carston Holler shares my affinity for experimentation with games and the viewers' interaction with objects. This is particularly obvious in his works with slides, namely "Test Site" at Tate Modern where he was openly trying to "seize the visitor and involve him or her in an experience of the here and now that renders doubt or any critical distance to the world impossible." (Hantelmann:2007:18)
Holler is acknowledged as an artist who likes to experiment with games and the viewers interaction with the objects. This has been obvious in his works such as Ball House and Frisbee House, where he filled rooms with balls and Frisbees respectively, encouraging the visitors to pick up and play with toys, and his ongoing work with slides, which was most recently shown in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern with his installation Test Site, where five slides were installed that viewers could utilise of their own free will.
|
Holler states that "This aspect of my installation is very spectacular, as you said, because the performers become spectators (of their own inner spectacle) while going down the slides, and are being watched at the same time by those outside the slides." (Holler:2006)
Whilst a large majority of Holler's work does take place in galleries and museum spaces, he feels that "...one function of the museum as being a space for experimentation and for testing ideas and concepts that could eventually be realised on a larger scale outside the museum." (Holler 2006) This shows that he is using the idea of the art gallery to develop ideas, but he is not adverse to the idea of producing larger scale works outside of exhibition spaces, and has designed a system of slides for Stratford town centre, for the 2012 Olympics, as well as undertaking a commission for a slide in Miuccia Prada's Milan office.
|
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Rafael Lozano-Hammer shares my interest in art as play, he develops projects where the viewer gets to interact in a playful manner with the work, particularly his Relational Architecture series, which includes works where the person is interacting in a direct manner such as Body Movies, where "Thousands of photo portraits taken on the streets ... are shown using robotically controlled projectors. However, the portraits only appear inside the projected shadows of local passers-by" (Lozano-Hemmer 2007). This project encourages both active participation from those passers-by whose shadows are utilised, and passive participation from those who are photographed on the streets. Remote control is also an area which is employed by Lozano-Hemmer, notably in his Vectorial Elevation project, first seen in Mexico in 1999-2000, where participants were able to create huge light sculptures over the city by using an online 3D interface. The interface fed the information to the robotic searchlights placed around the area, allowing participants to create whatever patterns and images they desired giving them control over the creative output. This particular notion parallels the way in which the Sock Monster Project hands over creative control to the participants.
|
|
|
Rinzen
Australian collective Rinzen's project Neighbourhood is the first tactile manifestation in a series of "...collaborative RMX projects taking cue from the Surrealists methods and exploring their ambition of "Made by all and not by one"." (Rinzen:2006:4). Their previous projects had all been digital and transported via email. The Neighbourhood project involved a selection of twenty plain white rag dolls which were sent out to twenty different artists who were, "unaccustomed to working creatively with a needle and thread" (Rinzen:2006:4) to be remixed.
|
|
Once these had been created, they were returned to Rinzen, who photographed them and then sent them off to a second selection of artists, who added, developed and evolved the dolls in any way they chose. The dolls were then returned to Rinzen once again, photographed, and sent out for their third and final remixing to another selection of artists. With this ever-developing work, it is initially hard to see what the 'art' itself lies. Is it the book created to show the development of the dolls? Is it the dolls once they have been finished with? In my opinion, the art is the work itself, in changing the dolls from one state to another, not the finished product that is created. This particular conundrum is paralleled within the Sock Monster Project when it comes into contact with those who are accustomed to object driven art; initially they often fixate on the Sock Monsters themselves and see them as a precious object instead of a tool for enabling participants.
|
|
Graffiti Research Lab are a dynamic group who share my desire to activate the viewer and they have stated that their "main goal is to make thinks that other people can use" (Graffiti Research Lab:2007) the most public acclaimed of their inventions is the 'Throwie', which is a small battery powered light with a magnet attached to it, the purpose of which is to throw at any metal object or structure, creating points of interest and aesthetical attention on any of these normally drab and uninteresting structures. Utilising the almost unlimited communications potential of the internet, GRL have encouraged people all over the world to create these Throwies and use them to brighten up their local areas. This has led to a community of people who share videos of their work on YouTube; this artistic device has similarities to my practice with regard to the Sock Monster Project where I am seeding an online community
|
Oda Projesi examine the links between daily life and artistic practice. The collaborative is interested in what could be termed as the art of existing. With a motivation similar to that of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, they are involved in finding new ways to see and experience the world in which we live on a local, national and worldwide scale. Perhaps their most intriguing work is that for which they are named; Oda Projesi or Room Project revolved around finding new means by which to employ the room with a view to fulfilling the groups desire to, "bridge relations between artists, non-artists, artist-run-groups, institutions and the communities in the neighbourhood." (Korth:2004) The practical crux for the project centred on the way that the space can be used, allowing work to be produced, created and experimented with, whilst in the middle of the two rooms there is a marked area which goes on with its natural life.
Oda Projesi's residency of sorts began with the exhibition About a Useless Space (2000), in which the room was cleared and exhibited with George Perec's text, and since then the collective have worked directly through committees, developing relationships with their neighbours and extending invitations to them, encouraging them to become part of the gentrification process.
|
|
|
These events often produce no physical end product or object other than their video and photographic documentation, the experiences that the participants have obtained instead being considered as the outcome. The members of the collective work directly with the participants so that this "... monument composed of gestures from everyday life and layers of memories of the community" is created for all, not just the participants." (Lind:2004)
|
|
Kid Robot
Munny is a similar simulacrum of the Sock Monster project although once again the drive is for capital gain. With the Munny project willing participants buy one of the dolls, which come in a variety of sizes and styles, and then personalise them. Kid Robot run various competitions for customers to enter and display a gallery of customers modified dolls on their website. Although an interesting cultural reference they are lacking in terms of contextual reference or intellectual sympathy since once again their impetus is for profit and my practice is concerned with cultural and social capital.
|
|
Joseph Cornell (1903-72) is best known for his obsessive and intricate constructions of the exotic and the elliptical. His work can be seen to enjoy correlations between his methods of accumulation and juxtaposition in the box and collage works. A key element in the discourse between our works is that similar to my intimate work and objects of significance they were not originally meant for wide audiences. They were rather made as gifts for individuals, even sometimes for people he had never met before, but who in some way had touched or had had an impact on his life. Also sharing the view that Cornell was a playful artist, that his boxes were not intended to be singularly looked at, they are playful objects intended to be rotated, suspended and shaken; the works demand interaction and close attention.
|
|
|
Cornell's art can be said to present an infinity of atmospheres within a small space. One of the reasons why Joseph Cornell made boxes could be that he spent all his life observing the passage of time. He wanted to capture it, to measure it. Creating a thought-provoking experience of temporal processes, associations, and interconnections for others to enjoy.
|
|
Jeremy Deller (1966- Present) known for his associations with folk art, his collaborations with non-professional artists and his practice of using other people's work and experiences to create video documents or events. My artistic association with Deller lies on a variety of levels, principally; the importance he places on the non-physical attributes of the work and the way we both view the traditional labels of artist and viewer as somewhat redundant and prefer to involve ourselves in creative partnerships with those largely seen to be outside the sphere of modern fine art.
|
|
It has been said that Deller's work does not lend itself to the gallery since, "anything you can show is the detritus after something tremendous" (Braningan:2004) my works also do not sit comfortably in the sterile environment of the gallery since the intimate works are negotiated for an intended and placing them in the gallery either removes them from the intended or delays the receivership of the article. The reason that the public works are not content within the gallery is that they are engineered for public spaces that are not usually in receivership of art and because of their ephemeral nature often all that remains of the works is the documentation. A further connection in our working methodologies is that Deller also, "embraces complexity and is fascinated by connections" (Braningan:2004) this parallels my exploration of the intricate webs of connections and associations that fuse our individual factions and wider communities.
|
Germaine Koh (1967 - Present) is a visual artist whose work focuses on everyday actions, recognizable objects and common places. Her work often "...explores abstract forms of communication whereby the viewer must negotiate a transaction or physically encounter a situation that the artist has staged." (Koh:2007) Her works share several associations with my practice and are most naturally observed when explained individually;
"Pledge" (2002) this work shares an association with my endeavours in social capital as it acknowledges the significance of individual interactions. Pledge was an edition of 5000 copper tokens, bearing the words "I WILL" they are designed as an alternative form of currency that recognises, "bonds of trust that elude quantification" (Heather, Reinke:2005)
|
|
|
Tilleke Schwarz (1946-Present) enjoys a conversational relationship with the audience for her works and maintains that, "The viewer is invited to decipher connections or to create them. The viewer may assemble the stories and to produce chronological and causal structures. Actually the viewer might step into the role of the "author". It can become a kind of play between the viewer and me." (Schwarz:2007) This corresponds to my attitudes concerning creative partnerships although, Schwarz's partnerships primarily exist within the sphere of Fine Art. I enjoy the way that Schwarz utilises narrative structures as a form of communication, particularly the way her works contain, "elements. Not really complete stories, with a beginning, a storyline, and an end." (Schwarz:2007)
|
This allows for a freedom in the work that I intend to investigate more thoroughly in my future works.
Folk art is a phrase used to describe a vast range of work that is not created as art for art's sake, instead being used to decorate traditional practical objects such as store signs, fire buckets, weathervanes and other such objects. The parallel with my work is in the essence of folk art, which can be split into the following elements:
Utility - Folk art is used for practical purposes, rather than simply as art for art's sake, and my work too possesses that quality, as I create work that the intended owner wants or needs
Community - The work I create tends to be for someone within my community, someone whom I interact with and recently those in the community that I am seeding with the Sock Monster Project
Individuality - Of the pieces I create, no two things are the same, as I make them for individuals.
Symbolism - The article which I have made becomes a symbol for the time spent negotiating the work and sharing the experience with the owner of the work. Much like how Koh's knitwork becomes a monument to the time spent creating it
|
| |
|
