The Self-Isolation Residency 13th may 2020: Day 45

Exploring Installation No. 6: 'Difference and Repetition': Cow House Studios Artist Residency, 2011, Antony Clarkson

I today I'm going to be looking at a couple of aspects that often feature in my practice, both of which are illuminated by the piece that I would like to reflect upon tonight. I know that a lot of what I do comes from instinct and that can sometimes be hard to explain to other people, so being able to write in out like this in a blog will hopefully make some things clearer

I have on several occasions so far mentioned 'situation-specific' art in passing so in reference to today's piece I would like to expand upon before I go any further. So what is it and how does it differ from site specific art? Well, the way that I think about it is that it isn’t just about the space, it is also about what the space contains, which is why I refer to it as an environment. But there is another important difference for me and that is all about the time factor; not about how long I have to produce the work in, (although that could be an influence). No, it is more about the occasion of my meeting with the environment, the juncture at which we come together. If I had come to an environment a day earlier or a day later something may have been different about it; an object may have been added or removed. Likewise a day earlier or later I may be different; I may,or may not, have encountered something that changes the way I think.

Some of this I have alluded to before, but there is an element of my work that I haven't as yet mentioned. My work can often appear a bit serious in its ideas and inspiration, but there is an equally important factor that should be remembered in this kind of work. It is the area of 'PLAY'. Whatever else I am doing I am definitely playing, I guess you could call it serious play.

The piece shown in the photo above is something which I was “playing” with during my time on the Cow House Studios Residency in Ireland in 2011. The piece was entitled Difference and Repetition it used materials found in the studios, a dozen painting easels, two standard lengths of timber and a spirit-level. I 'played' with the piece for a while unsure as to whether this may be its final outcome, but that is the beauty of being an artist in residence in a studio like that, I can set up a large-scale sculpture/installation and revisit over a period of time, making adjustments to it, playing with it. In the days after I created 'Difference and Repetition' I spent a lot of my days looking at and thinking about it. It took quite some time to be sure that I was completely happy with it before I had to considering dismantling it so that I could use the space to experiment with something else and so I wanted to be sure exactly how I felt about it before I took it down. It was generally a good piece, I liked the complexity of the structure and that as a construction it came to a natural end; as in it was not physically possible to fit any more easels, even if I'd had them,  into it in the same pattern. It is particularly the structure around the interweaving of the legs which I like the most, I remember thinking about this when the sun came out and shined through one of the roof windows in the studio allowing me to take the photo below. This in a way actually shows the structure of the piece better than the actual piece itself. In a strange way it is interesting how these things work out. I also love the texture of this photo the fact that I think if you didn’t know it was a photo you could easily take it for a drawing. I love that ambiguity to be present in some of my work. Perhaps this photo was actually the outcome of the piece after all?