The Self-Isolation Residency 2nd April 2020: Day 4

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So it appears that I'm going to be creating a self-portrait, appropriate for someone in self-isolation. As I think I mentioned I didn't have any plan of what type of work I'd be producing during this residency but on reflection I'm not totally surprised with this direction. The acceptance of this as being the direction for my next piece of art to be produced on residency has had me thinking  today about some of the work which I have produced during previously residencies and how, in the same way, I had no specific plan of what I was going to do going into those either. This has made me want to write a little at this point about the way I approach and think about a piece of work for an exhibition or gallery or indeed a residency.

It may seem like quite a strange thing to say but I consider one of my great strengths as an artist to be the fact that when I set out on a new project of this type that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing! It means that I have a completely open-mind when I approach the work which I have found from experience is vital for what I do. Much of the work that I have produced over the years has been a type intervention for which I had to create a new name myself. In the past my work would have been refereed to as site specific, that being, and here I quote the Tate websites definition:

'The term site-specific refers to a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location.'

Now that is exactly what my work is, however over time usage of this definition has become so blurred by its misuse that I found it impossible to continue to use it for my work. In what way blurred ? Simply this, if a site-specific installation 'has an interrelationship with its location' how can it then be uninstalled, moved to another, totally different location and reinstalled there purportedly as the same piece of art? Artists and galleries  now do this all the time but still insist on calling the work 'site-specific'.

At this point you might be thinking, 'that's all well and good, but what does it have to do with the reason why I think that having absolutely no idea what I'm doing at the beginning of a project is a good thing?' As I said its to do with keeping an open mind. When I start on a new piece of work, particularly an installation  piece, I am very conscious of letting the piece evolve through this interrelationship with the location. I spend a great deal of time 'getting to know' a location, learning to feel what the space 'needs' and and my work is a response to that need. And so all of my work of this kind is always created to only be exhibited as part the location that it was created for, these works will never be reinstalled in another location, if they were they would become futile and meaningless.

it is for this reason that I choose not to use the now meaningless term site- specific and choose instead to title my work as 'situation- specific'.

Composition in White (Sculpture),  Sichuan Institute of Fine Art, 2012, Antony Clarkson