The text accompanying the images are small elements of much more extended and underpineed observations. Before the space, I asked the group as experienced visitors to galleries to change the way they encountered today if they could. We know how we normally lock, walk around a space, how much time we spend. I asked them to be rooted and anchored in their experiences in the space by the object they chose to hold and use. We had already discussed all of the objects they had, the readymade real grasps, the felt plastacine, the clay grip (of my hand) and the red clay potato/stone/pebble. I had made all objects before knowing that we would enter the tanks. I had not made them in response to any of the work we saw. I told the group that they could choose any of the objects we had used so far, I had given everyone a canvas bag to hold the objects not in use. Most of the time within the tanks we were alone and the group separated and comfortably inhabited the space. 2 people chose the red shape, 1 person the book making instrument, 1 the trigger, 1 the clay grip (of my hands) It was still and the sound of the work through the speakers within the sculptures of Nkangas work filled the space. They started to in differing ways offer up the work to the work. It was only as we discussed their reactions when we left the space that I saw how some people’s connections where physical and some more internal thoughts. They started to take pictures, reach their hands holding the object of their choice in front of them, turn it in their hands. Some sat, or lay on the floor, some started to edge their red clay object nearer to the sculptures pushing them slightly beyond the boundaries. It was as though they were trying to find a meeting point. We were in the space for about 20-30 minutes and decided to talk about how they had felt outside of the space. ‘I stopped thinking verbally as soon as I entered the space with the trigger in my hand’ said one of the group. She had the cram plastic trigger in her hands now and I was so aware that it was the missing part of a megaphone, just like the one in one of the lockers near us. She told us that she had picked up one of the large spheres in the space and placed it on her trigger, she was thinking also imagining a cauliflower on the trigger she told us. The way she explained the sculpture being lifted onto the trigger felt as though she had actually done it, not that she imagined it. She had described her truth of the space and the action of the lift and the completion of the trigger (grasp). What was in charge, which object dominated which her trigger less plastic form or the sculptural sphere, they were 2halves of each other. She stopped the verbal she said and all of the group began to discuss what the verbal of thinking was and this propelled the dialogue towards the different elements of the encounter. They were felt and thought. Another person explained how she had felt integrated into the piece with the red potato/stone, there was something to compare to, they were part of each other. She had taken pictures that showed the crossing of the boundaries and the small encroachments of the exhibited work. One individual discussed how the sculpture in the space were a community, a family the sculptures had felt like people and that holding the clay of the grasp, of the fingers (my hand) had felt like he was able to be one of them, to touch them. His object spoke the same language of the sculptures. Another member of the group interrupted to agree that her object (red stone/potato) had felt like one of the family, she had felt that too. At the start, she had wanted to throw in to the cluster of sculptures so that it could be with them, where it belonged, but then as she had held the object in her hands and had stroked it and clutched it, she felt she had to protect it, she felt sorry for it wanted to keep it. They all started to comment on how the objects had enabled a deeper significance with what they were seeing but kore importantly how they were engaging what they were feeling. I asked what about the artist, what about these new interpretations that the group were bringing. They all spoke at once; the artist had left the work now and that it was public and there’s to experience. ‘If I had chosen any of the objects would it have worked so profoundly’ one person said. We went on to discuss the connections and resonances and how choices impact on the object encounter and its strength or transformative experience. One person took the bookbinding tool that is like a letter opener, or blunted knife and he said, ‘I cut them all free, all the ropes between the spheres, I cut them’. He said this whilst making sweeping sword like actions with his arm. He had freed them, his object enabled that action as had the other object allowed the spheres to be lifted onto the trigger. The space of the tanks now looking back into the space was still but had been momentarily charged by these actions whether visual or imagined. ‘I felt an emotive shift’ he said still with the bookbinding tool in his hand.
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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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