18
The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
November – December 2010
PROFILE
An Evolving Showcase Joan Healy rePorts on ‘AN INSTRUCTIONAL’ a touring exhibition project initiated by the artist-led organisation MART
Clodagh Lavelle. Work shown at 'Mart Instructional' Space, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Sophie Losher. Work shown at 'Mart Instructional' Space, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Emma Wade HUGS – Human Utopain Generation System. 'Mart Instructional' Shunt. London.
James Hayes A Room full of Donestic Bliss. 'Mart Instructional' Shunt, London.
Joan Healy Becoming a Franz West 'Mart Instructional'Molesworth Gallery, Dublin.
I recently took part in ‘An Instructional’ a european touring project by MART, an Irish / UK based artist run organisation. ‘An Instructional’ was based on the concept of brocolage, or more specifically ‘making-do’ – that is how artists respond to the challenges posed by their environment by using their own creativity and available resources. DIY culture has always been hugely influential on artistic practice. MART was set up by Matthew Nevin, Ciara Scanlan and Chloe Freaks in Galway, Ireland in 2007. The primary aim of MART – which takes its name from the conflation of the terms media and art – is to educate, involve and promote new media, installation and performance art work to the public. To accomplish this, MART showcase’s artists’ works both online and by setting up temporary gallery spaces within accessible city centre locations providing direct access to public to these art forms. MART has created an online gallery space for New Media artists (www.mart.ie / www.martgroup.org). MART currently has over 50 online artist members. Membership continues to grow each month; and in total there are over 100 active artists in the collective, based in UK, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, the US, Canada, Slovakia, and many more. In Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1), he highlights the many ingenious ways people subvert capitalist systems of topdown cultural consumption, by using their collective ingenuity to produce new tools, meanings and uses from existing systems and objects. This subversive ‘tactical’ ethos seems particularly relevant now in times of global economic recession’ and the increasingly difficult financial situation that many artists find themselves in. The tour was an experiment in how to – with only limited means – create a cultural space for artists to express their ideas and promote their work. In each venue, the artist-curators Matthew Nevin and Ciara Scanlan chose a different mixture of artworks from a pool of over 30 participating artists. Their idea was to use works that could be adapted to the unique architectural context of each different exhibition environment. Working on a limited budget, the artworks on the tour had to be easily transportable or reproducible onsite. Practices of potlatch (2) and skill sharing were employed, in this way resources were distributed amongst the artists, with each artist actively participating in the production and running of the exhibition. Travelling to Norway, the UK, Slovakia, Germany and then back to Ireland, ‘The Instructional’ took place in venues such as Shunt in London, Space in Bratislava, Stadtbad in Berlin, and Entree in Bergen. Some spaces such as in Bergen’s Entree were traditional ‘white cube’ gallery spaces with a dedicated audience made up of arts professionals and visual art students. In contrast to this, and possibly due to the low exposure of artists from Western Europe in Slovakia, when ‘An Instructional’ was exhibited in Space in Bratislava, the work was received with massive local media interest. Other spaces such as Shunt in London – a cavernous underground structure– attracted a mixed audience of artists, musicians and theatre-goers. Stadtbad in Berlin is a huge abandoned 1950’s swimming pool complex that had been turned into artist studios and an art venue. Because of its unusual architecture and the legacy of its former use, this
was a particularly challenging space to curate, but it also opened up new opportunities for work, particularly for artists who wanted to play with the small dark cubicles and odd acoustics of the space. Some artists interpreted the theme of making do in a very literal way, while others interpreted the theme in more reflexive ways. Ivan Twohig exhibited work specifically made from a workshop he facilitated at the Glor Arts Centre in Clare. It comprised of a modular paper sculpture, made though collaboration by local students, it was designed to be easily assembled and disassembled in each new location. Others used found objects or ready-mades as a source for their work. Jim Ricks’ 505 for example used a photograph he had taken of some gang graffiti found in Oakland, California, and reproduced it in each gallery space, each time physically mimicking the territorial tagging of the gangs from whom Ricks reappropriated his image. Adam Gibney’s The Semionaut’s Agora; Scene 342 comprised of copies of found imagery of mass produced consumer food items, distorted and reconstructed into confusing simulacra of the original items. Layering found sound from film and TV advertising, he constructed chaotic narratives. Debbie Jenkinson’s Three Word Phrase consisted of a hacked analog flip clock – whereby each number panel had been replaced by a new panel with an image hand painted onto it. The images rotated in the three sections of the clock, and change every hour, every minute and every second, according to the clock’s demonstration of the passing of time. They combined to form a transient visual puzzle – the sequence and narrative of being defined by the parameters of the clock mechanism. Aine Phillips’ wearable piece Strap Wrap was also designed to be easily transportable and adaptable to any location. It took the form of a shawl made from the straps of 123 discarded bras – given to her by friends and family, a monument to the 123 women in Galway who had breast cancer last year. Although made from humble materials, Strap Wrap is a powerful piece loaded with the symbolism of the brassiere as a cultural signifier – both of female sexuality and of patriarchal oppression. In the combination of the intimate personal items of so many women into one wearable unit, Strap Wrap became a new symbol of women’s strength and collective support for one another. Vukasen Nedeljkovic displayed laminated immigration papers that he had received from the Irish / UK governments along with a letter stating that his asylum visa would not allow him to leave Ireland to go to his mother’s funeral in his native Serbia. Because of his identity as a foreign national, Nedeljkovic’s participation in the project served as a personal examination of the darker authoritarian systems of power that control every aspect of his public life. While his artwork was allowed to travel, the artist himself was not. Eleanor Lawler’s Wall playfully interpreted of the themes of the shoe. Using found fabrics, she created an environment where viewers had to lie down on the floor to view a video piece. What viewers saw, replicated the viewpoint they now occupied – the underside of a bed. The piece recalled the child’s game of ‘hide and go seek’ – in the video footage we see feet running around the bedroom in response to nonsensical instructions coming from the direction of the camera,
accompanied by the laboured breathing sounds of someone crouched into a small space and moving around with difficulty. By creating this immersive installation environment, Lawler imposed a kind of kinaesthetic viewing experience upon the viewer, whereby viewers were both physically and intellectually engaged with the work. A strong performative contingent was also featured in ‘An Instructional’, with artists such as Katherine Nolan making temporal body art works where she interacted directly with each space. In Surface Tension, Nolan, dressed as a burlesque artist, put on a simultaneously erotic and grotesque display where she uses the architecture as a fetishistic prop to explore the narcissistic impulse in performance. For my own performance piece – Becoming a Franz West I used discarded objects found on site such as tubing, old furniture and even a toilet bowl to make a living sculpture inspired by the Paßstück sculptural works of Franz West (3). Made from cheap materials such as foam, plaster bandage, sticks and painted in bright colours, I turn myself into an object to be consumed. The performance Our Common Future by Martinka Bobrikova and Oscar de Carmen, used a simple Junior Cert science experiment, with materials such as copper and zinc nails bought from the hardware store, and potatoes, apples and tomatoes, to create miniature electrolytic cells (batteries) which were used to create abstract sounds – the sugar-energy contained in the vegetables created patterns of small analog electrical signals which were amplified to create an unexpected orchestra of noise. MART’s ‘An Instructional’ was a great way for the participating artists to network and to gain exposure to new European audiences. It also gave them a chance to interact with the local art communities of each different city. The tour also grew into a great platform for artistic experimentation, through the combination of so many artists from different backgrounds living, working and travelling together for over four weeks, new opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange were facilitated. Pioneering artist / architect Markus Miessen suggests that a new model of participation can be created “through the conscious implementation of zones of conflict” (4) and that through these conflicts new artistic and design ideas can be created. In the creative environment of the tour, with so many opportunities to perform, exhibit and collaborate, the MART ‘An Instructional’ tour became an evolving showcase of new ideas and a great example of participatory art practice. Joan Healy www.martgroup.org / www.mart.ie Notes 1. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press: Berkeley 1984. 2. The term ‘potlatch’ meaning “to give away” or “a gift” originates in the culture of the people of the Pacific Northwest of the America’s. It went through a history of rigorous ban by both the Canadian and United States’ federal governments, and has been the subject of study of many anthropologists. 3. Details of Franz West’s work can be seen at www.gagosian.com/artists/franz-west/ 4. For further details on Markus Miessen’s work and ideas see – www.studiomiessen.com