Captured by Nicola French, 30/01/2014.
Any form of a collection automatically finds itself within a particular category; whether it be: domestic, belonging, national, conceptual, or marking a time/place/ownership.
My personal collection falls within the conceptualised category and also marking ownership. I collect rings that have been passed down through the generations in my family. When I wear a ring that belonged to somebody I lost from my family, I feel comforted and closer to the person of which they once belonged.
Following on from introducing ourselves and our collections, we began to explore different Site Specific works and companies. One piece that we paid particular attention to was Martin Creed’s ‘Work No.850’. The performance consisted of athletes sprinting through the Tate Gallery every 30 seconds. One of his reasons behind creating this piece was to represent life. When we think of death, typically we think of stillness and serenity, however running is an exciting activity that requires adrenaline and swift, free movement. When creating work such as this, the artist needs to consider his audience/spectators. “In anticipation of their visit, what is to be done? First, nothing: we leave it as it is, facilitating access, saying little, allowing the remains to ‘speak’ for themselves, letting visitors address them in their own ways.” – (Pearson, 2010, 24) As Pearson explains in his introduction to Site Specific performance, the artist needs to consider the audience in terms of accessibility, however not to feel that they must feed them information about the work they are witnessing, instead allowing them to make their own judgements and perceptions from it. Creed also believes that there isn’t a sole person who can define what ‘art’ is. “I’m actually not the person to ask about whether this is art, because it’s not me that decides if something is art or not…” – (Creed, 2008)
Finally, we considered the idea of what makes a certain place a site or not. Site specific work can test a performers comfortability as it is a performance that isn’t being delivered on a stage or in a theatre as they may be used to. When we visited the Usher Gallery and viewed the different collections, it was interesting to explore the different spaces and imagine what kind of work we could create from viewing different items of a collection that may mean a lot to one person, however mean nothing from a different persons perspective.
Works Cited:
- Creed, M. (2008) Tateshots: Martin Creed [online] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8Fl45-DFw [Accessed 5 February 2014].
- French, N (2014) Rings [Taken on 30 January 2014].
- Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Palgrave Macmillan.