THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 27th MARCH 2021: DAY 363

'Tension.’ situation-specific installation, found materials (cling-film and space), The Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art, 2009.

'Tension.’ situation-specific installation, found materials (cling-film and space),
The Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art, 2009.

'Arch' was my first situation-specific installation; it was created when I was first beginning to consider ‘space’ as a medium in its own right. The space in question was actually a painting studio at Manchester School of Art and the two pieces of wood were off cuts left in during some renovation work. Coming across the space, empty, apart form these two pieces of wood, was enough to start me thinking about possible ways in intervene with the space in such a way as to increase the spectator’s apprehension of spaces.  And so Arch and a whole new way of thinking for me was born.

Once this idea of affecting a space and how people use it was born for me, I began to take more time to consider how people utilise spaces but without really being aware of them. My site-specific installations/interventions are often ways to make anonymous spaces speak for themselves in that, as far as possible I employ pre-existing features of a space which I then define, enhance or exaggerate.

‘Tension’, although it includes the addition of a ‘foreign’ material, the cling-film, is a good example of how I attempt to make a space speak, or in this case shout, by disrupting people’s daily usage of it. The Holden Gallery, although being an active and popular art gallery, is also a central space and busy thoroughfare around which many university departments and offices are arranged. Navigating the space are many desire lines connecting the shortest routes from As to Bs; to dislocate and inconvenience these journeys, especially by making an intervention from the most flimsy, transparent and disposable material I could access, would make people both re-evaluate the gallery and its raison-d’etre. The art gallery that people normally walk straight through without a thought, now has a wall across it, a wall which is also a piece of art. A wall made from such a material that, although, in itself, has no intrinsic value and could be swept aside with one finger, must be respected owning to its status as art.

To be continued..