Overall I found the weekend an interesting space to work in a detached mode, allowing for the exploration of materials and ideas that previously where out of reach. What I found interesting though is that what I did, and especially on the Saturday was very much something I would do. The piece seems to fit in with a body of work that I have been doing over the past few years in that its an exploration of a scene/narrative within the context of a system that encourages movement and exploration of the self and of the space. Within this system as with others was the routine of passing in and out, or variant movement. One aspect that was also built into this project was pathways that lead out of the work and back into the surrounds where it was placed. These pathways also lead into the space. Beneath the project laid as with other works a political social questioning.
Day two, was different and in reflection I realise that I shouldn’t have done a thing, as the act of returning to the work of the day before was the outcome that I intended. The reason for this is that going back, looking a fresh with the discussion of the day before in mind, to talk about the work from a different perspective. I think this is what I was trying to convey from the framing system that was created, but at the moment I don't think I like the idea of the work and that I am seriously reviewing the thought around. That though is a quite a good outcome because it has given me the chance to visualise a mode of thinking.
Comments
I felt that the first work was a sensitive, articulate, aesthetically-
engaging response to location and time. It heightened and drew-out particular qualities of the elements and forces at work; fencing, lines of plantation pines, colours, nature, marks of man and our own presence as a group. In this way you might describe it as a narrative gift. There's no doubt it is design.
Day two was a different form of work, it was nebulous, un-intrusive, it became lost in the forest. It was almost "conceptual". The work was in the telling and it became a conversation, the substance of the work was dematerialised; it was all around us and was discovered during the conversation. So the work was a framework, a manifold framework which did, and didn't exist. It had multiple viewpoints - unlike the video "frames". This work was, for me, far more adventurous, exploratory, "unsafe" and open. It did not rely on an aesthetic response for it's permission to exist. It was gestural and difficult.
I think it was a development on the previous days work - and I think it is an important work to look at in the schema of all your work.
Posted by Neal Haslem at August 30, 2006 11:12 AM