I am really intersted in how the hand that is through the sleeve and through the paper lays there passive as it is pointed at and touched as though it is an object beyond the body and not belonging to Sophie. However their is a tenderness in the slight touch that she makes on her own hand. Whilst they are discussing the image and whether it makes a difference i was so conscious of the hands being in and out of the picture, of the event. This is a gentle example of how they are connecting with otherness - other objects -other thoughts -other materials other people, everything becomes - emerges as part of everything else, the boundary of the watercolour paper presnets Sophie's own hand back to her so that it is the same but altered and charged differently. When she touches her own hand as though an object it makes a circle of an experience through her body and through the small hurdle or intervention of my object and sleeve.
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They put the sleeves on and joined themselves together, remarking how intimate it felt as they held hands or their fingers touched withi the sleeve. They just kept them on their arms and started to talk about their actions, being in the space and as they spoke I became aware of people watching them and how large an area we were taking up in the space. Jo, lloyd and Sophie were comfortable and fluid. the sleeves made their conversation different, their arms tugged even if only one of them was talking. They had formed a space in the space and their objects and belongings sat inside. They talked about the stitiches and the importance that the objects had been made, it was interesting to hear them say that they were irritated by the climbing wall grasps 'you just ordered these and bought them online' Lloyd had remarked, it wasn't enough. This was something that reminded me of James when he said that the white grasps with thimbles in were not one of my real objects. There was a sense that I needed to make a material effort, they needed to feel my making and that in that making the intention and attention would be seen and valued and understood. However the climbing wall grasps were being compared to the red clay handful (very similar to the object james had said was too simple in terms of what he knew my objects could be) now they grasps were more relevant than the manufactured objects. Howvere when they were sen through the rubber ring they changed, and the group commented that now they were OK , more important, better, fitting, more valuable. They disscussed how they were sewn through the rubber and that they connected beyond the surface but through to the other side - puctured - again. With this realisation lloyd lifted the rubber ring and blew to inflate it and as it teporarily filled with air it also slowly emptied.
Within the gallery the individuals puncture the space not with violence but with intent. They move differently, look differently and act out -play up amongst the other things.
They become the stitches and connect with work and the building with others - with an awareness that they might be connecting differently than assumed. They extend a few centimeters more than they should, their voice maybe a decibel louder, their actions a little more exaggerated. They heat up the space and fill it even if outnumbered by others -they matter in the space - they are more than present, they inhabit and claim. The stitches map across a space show the movement of the other side. They are the underside - quiet mapping that leaves a resonating mark in the space - I see it and feel it as I observe - and they hover and land. The territory is fleetingly theirs although no one else is aware of that, they claim the space and move on, a little like a dog who might wee on a tree - a bin - a patch of land and name that territory as theirs - or at least that they have been there already. The stitch is equally a puncture and a bind. It mends and produces something new as it creates tiny potholes in the page. A connection of sorts. Interestingly this links directly to the double sleeve - which allowed Jo the ability to push her hand through the image through the gallery, through the space of the drawing. As Jo discussed the sleeve/drawing on her arm she became more physical-she stood up, moved her arm and kicked towards the boundary around the sculpture in front of her. She was reaching through the object but the objects was a conduit - a method of thinking and enabled her actions to be valid, meaningful - licensed. The object gave her permission to become an exaggerated version of herself, like a puppet and puppeteer in one encounter. It seems relevant that Deleuze and Guattari play with the analogy of puppeteer and puppet within their writing (1987) Howver here it felt as though Jo was herself both the object played her and she played it and so the exchange became seamless and rather than puppets THEY (jo and the object) became an instrumnet all of their own. Possibly musical. The use of the collars has been important and differently that expected, Caroline sent me a drawing of a lace collar in relation to her writing around what learning feels like when I was already sourcing collars. This material connection was interesting as my feeling from the stiffness of the collar that held the wearer differently, poised, upright, restricted was different from the stifness of the lace and unravelling or sewing stitch of Caroline's drawing. (below) My formal collars reminded me of the cuffs used in Lygia Clarke's work and the important tie back to her shift between practices of the formal and the relational and the letting go of one for another. (image below) What the collars actually started to do for the object/image/drawings is that they enabled me to make a widow a passage bewteen the front and the back of the image and therefore the 2 sides dissolves forming one object a gate, a small A3 threshold. Interstingly the collar and the neck became a cuff when the sleeve was stiched to the paper and the collar itsellf was no longer present. This object was the one I was least sure of, it felt very temporary - there was the knowledeg that the stiches would end up pulling through the papaer, the paper would bend, fold, soften through the use- yet it was the most successful. 'It is a queen in this space' said one of the group but how does that translate and what is that success for the particpant based on in terms of a transformative experience and encounter? It felt permeable without liquid or gases, the sleeve through it's attchement to other allowed it to provide a conduit beyond itself. When it was just on the arms it was about what was held, what was hidden, heat of hands, intimacy - this object mobilsed and put down anchors to move from, weaving through spaces, this small piece of paper was attended to and it was an event bigger than itself, that its material form. It was like a mask that allowed the group to perform as other or more than themselves - rather than a mask that concealed. Both Sophhie and Jo wanted the exhibited work by Sheila Gonda to be absorbed by the sleeve and wanted to place the hole in the paper by the woven hair of the exhibited work so that it could drop inside their object, almost as though ebing consumed by it, engulfed by the thing/object that we had introduced into the space. In terms of scale our intervention could never engulf the Gonda piece yet both Jo and Sophie thought or felt it was happening- could be achievable.
After her time with me and the rest of the group at Tate Jo contacted me. At home Jo had made something and told me that she had made ..a device for puncturing a space - possibly a gallery. Jo went on to say ‘ Your drawing made me feel like making my own paper ball for my head! it really should have been twice the size but i ran out of paper! If i could breath in it i would consider wearing it in the Tate!’
What does this action create - to have the relationship between the space and my observation of Jo within it - my manifestation of her action through a drawing - her need to make the drawing physical again, to be in it - physically within it -embodied. In a sense Jo was altered by both the physical action of her body and her thinking in the gallery and then this was reinforced through my re interpretation or re representation of her frustrated action. Her boundary crossing was amplified by my actions and my making. I gave her encounter back to her and through the two dimensional image that I punctured with paper and flattened again through the photograph she felt propelled back towards making. I saw her action and made it, she saw her action through the image I made and she made her action physical again. This extension or connection between us was like a stitch pulling out and pulling together, tethered and free simultaneously. It was a physical relay of affect. These images are sophie's they are photographs that I didnt see at the time of being at Tate and so to see the way that she has photogrpahed her object so that it seems (below) so part of or attched to the Tony Cragg was really important in terms of the way that she calimed every exhibt as part of her narraitive when we were at the SCVA. This time she is careful she explores contact points but also the need again to entaggle or embed the object to another. The image above with the Carl Andre bricks was different as she said her object was not only suddenly so genedered and female in comparison but it became the fullstop to the bricks or formed an exclamation mark. Her adding to and finishing the other object with her own - which is happening with everyone. They are not twins but it is a realtionship that forms through the actions. How do we fit in to these spaces, how do we make sense of ourselves, how do we do this materially - by sticking, embedding, pasuing, attcahing, mirroring, budging, nudging, owning, enacting, intervening, being heard....materiaily heard. Esther once said it isnt about art - it is about what art can do - this is the more than eleemnt of the interpretative dialogue in the gallery. What do we learn not through the art but by our connection to materaility our connection to the force of art the force of things.
Small example of a layered drawing/image map. This is the very start of the process but the document (when outside of this format on a blog) can exist as an interactive PdF and so there are 2 videos that play within the still photographs, lines etc. I am trying to pull the actions and let them exist simultaneously on various maps - this version is too digital - too flat but starts to illustrate the way that they start to form as reflection points. The folded paper is too familiar and too simple as a reflection not only of the process/research outcomes but in terms of any critical shift within a practice research outcome context - it is polite.
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Kimberley FosterKimberley's practice as an artist is pedagogical, it doesn’t just reference learning, it plays with, embodies and encourages learning at its core. The objects consider ideas of collaboration and authorship, discussions about touch and encounter, and bring into active consideration issues of learning within social and participatory practices. Archives
October 2018
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