Statement of Process
The gallery
“For better or worse it [the white cube] is the single major convention through which art is passed. What keeps it stable is the lack of alternatives.” Brian O’Doherty A Subtle intervention by Fran Healands
the Gallery
gallery noun 1. a room or building for the display or sale of works of art. "an art gallery" synonyms: exhibition room, display room, art gallery, museum "his paintings were bought by a London gallery"
Site Specific art
A site-specific work of art is designed for a specific location, if removed from that location it loses all or a substantial part of its meaning. The term site-specific is often used in relation to installation art, as in site-specific installation; and land art is site-specific almost by definition. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/site-specific
Andy Goldsworthy, Hanging Trees 2007
I have a personal interest in site specific art and researched artists such as; Richard Long and Andy Goldworthy in college. I also took a trip to Yorkshire Sculpture park to experience these artists works in person. I very much enjoyed my visit and left my own transient piece in the space.
Looking at Locations
I Looked at locations with 6 other students, discussing our ideas about space and site specific art. This was useful to build a catalogue of interesting spaces within the campus and ideas of how to fill them. India was looking at outdoor staircases with spaces to climb into, Laura was interested in the pond outside the AAD building and I was thinking about the grassy mound that surrounds the pond. At the time, it felt that the 3 of us should work together using outdoor space as an initial connecting theme for our curatorial process and so we began to think about what work we could create as either a collaboration or with a strong curatorial theme.
Thinking With the grass hill in mind I was thinking of creating a tree sculpture, inspired by Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree, and situated in front of the new building named after the scientist, I felt that this would be a good relationship with the site. I experimented with copper wire but knew that the piece would need to be a lot bigger, the medium would have to be weather resistant and not easily tampered with. I also liked the idea of adding seed embedded paper leaves to the branches for the audience to take away and plant somewhere else.
g too big Site Report Reflection
Site meeting with Richard Hollinshead, artist and curator and my fellow students. To make the sculpture large enough to be seen would cost too much time and money. There could be serious health and safety implications with materials and location. Paper leaves will disintegrate too quick if weather bad. Suggested Guerrilla planting/ gardening. We all received good critique and advice which made us rethink our initial ideas, in our case we started again.
Thinking smaller Curatorial meeting 1 (Laura, India & Fran) We went away to re-think how we were going to go about this project, then we met and discussed our ideas, Laura and I agreed on some kind of intervention piece. We researched some artists and works that related to intervention as well as noting our own ideas.
THE TERM ART INTERVENTION APPLIES TO ART DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO INTERACT WITH AN EXISTING STRUCTURE OR SITUATION, BE IT ANOTHER ARTWORK, THE AUDIENCE, AN INSTITUTION OR IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
and maybe an int
r Particularly work using staircases as this piece by Huseyin Centinel really caught our attention. He bought paint from a hardware store and painted the steps on his street.
“Nature is colourful, cities can be as well�
tervention piece
locating a staircase
Curatorial Process
We looked at and rejected many staircases because the dark, not noticeable enough or did not disrupt the ess cube’ ethos of a contemporary exhibition space in this Architecture & Design building. We decided that the m most appropriate as they are designed to be unobtrusi the design of the building.
eir location was too sence of the ‘white s case the Art, main stairs were the ive, to blend in with
Our piece subverts the ‘white cube’ aesthetic of the AAD building. When work is not being displayed on the walls, this building has been described as bland and hospital like. Our piece intervenes with this without disrupting the exhibition space when used by other students.
collaboration isn’t easy Collaboration meeting 2 (Laura, India and Fran) Our second meeting to discuss ideas wasn’t very successful from a collaborative aspect as unfortunately, India wasn’t as enthused with our ideas of intervention and so decided to look at other groups and what work they would be producing and curating. This left just Laura and myself. We have decided that between us we would truly collaborate on creating a striking piece that would alter the environment in which it was installed.
Great minds don’t always think alike
In the Tate modern in 2016 Laura and I discovered this intervention piece on one of the lower staircases, we commented at the time that how great to create work from something as simple as electrical tape.
Laura and I conducted research into artists that have used staircases as a canvas and discovered Scottish artist Jim Lambie. • Installation artist • Uses 7 -9 bold colours of sticky vinyl tape • Each installation unique to environment Mental Oyster 2005 Turner Prize Installation
He begins installing instances of Zobop by applying a strip o along the baseboard of a room or corridor (or at the joint w wall meets the floor), until he has outlined the entire space w single colour of a consistent width, which varies across insta from a couple of millimetres to a few centimetres. Next to th strip of tape Lambie then adds another strip of a different co overlaps the preceding strip by precisely 2 mm, until he has another outline of the room. Lambie then repeats this proce creating perimeters among perimeters until he has filled the entire square-footage of the floor plan in which he is workin The result is a design consisting of successively smaller circumferences of vinyl tape that is dominated by parallel lin vibrant colour. Lambie has said that the pattern of colours in given manifestation of Zobop is applied randomly, and this, with the fact that the work is site-specific, means that each i unique. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lambie-zobop-t12236
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Jim Lambie ‘Zobop’ collective of spychedelic floor designs
Experimentation mediums
Chalk was too transient, it would wear off too easy and mark peoples clothing, we also agreed that the effect was not bold enough.
We considered using wallpaper or coloured paper but decided that removing it after the project would be a problem and were concerned about fire risk as paper is extremely flammable..
Electrical tape was too tricky to line up straight, on reflection should have started at the board side of the step. Placing anything on the step where feet are placed may cause slip or trip hazard for anyone using the stair case. This helped to decide to only use the riser part of the stair. The tape didn’t adhere too well and caused concerns that it would peel off too easily.
Our preferred medium was craft tape, we tried various brands but found one of the cheaper ones easier to reposition as was less tacky than DIY purpose tape. We decided that bold strips of a singular colour on a singular stair was most effective and the easiest to execute after trying patterns.
Projecting an image
Experimentation
We tried project a staircase, but a image was disto where we were n any further with
We made some removab the wall panel instead, s using the projector whe image.
When completed we re stuck it on the office do quote “I am the one wh Underneath the existing wait sign.
The tap resista
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ting an image onto as we suspected the orted to the point not happy to proceed h this experiment.
ble graffiti on so we could try en creating an
emoved the piece and oor along with the ho knocks�. g please knock and
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Using one of the lesser used stairwells at the rear of the Fine Art studios, we worked out that it takes two to apply the tape, we had to work together to line it up straight and to reduce the wrinkling, starting at the bottom of the step then working up seemed the best method for keeping the lines straight, we found that we could smooth out air bubbles after application with a soft cloth to produce a more even finish, and that cutting the tape slightly longer than needed using large, sharp scissors left a little overhang at the edges to be removed with a craft knife/scalpel. We also conducted a test piece on the main staircase as it is of a different material to the practice stairs and found that it was easier to work on this surface. It took us more than 12 hours for the two of us to complete the final piece, and was a test of endurance however the comments by students, staff and visitors to the university were all positive and peoples smiles of enjoyment were very rewarding.
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