We were given a task by Ally to write about an object or a painting. I chose the painting called ‘The Little Reader’ as there were many pieces of his artwork in the gallery all of which appeared to be of the same woman. I wrote from the perspective of the woman in the painting about her feelings towards Henry and being painted which were from a negative point of view.
We had to present the writings in small groups to the rest of the class, Anisha, Kristy and I had created something based on paintings of women. We decided to present our work in Gallery 4 where there were many painting of women and nude paintings of women and as our pieces were about women being exploited for their appearances and the expectations of women we felt that having the naked women who were painted by men surround our audience linked and emphasised the point we were making.
We had intended to present the work in the centre of the room, facing away from each other looking at the wall where the paintings were hanging. However when we entered the room to present our work the room was very full. Therefore we had to adjust our positioning and be very aware of the people around us viewing the artwork as we did not want to get in their way of their experience of the gallery.
The exercise was incredibly useful because we were made aware how nothing is definite and we will have to be prepared to go with what the circumstances are at the time of our performance and our performance will need to be able to be altered and changed last minute and during the performance. Moreover, when performing and presenting our piece we were very aware of people surrounding but also just passing by. It was made clear to us it is going to be very challenging to grab an audience attention and to keep it especially in the gallery setting as the public glance at the artwork and move on to the next thing, attention is not held for very long on each individual painting.
In our performance we will explore ways to be successful in obtaining the public attention and them turning into spectators and participants of our performance. After our two minute performance, there were only a few people still present in the room, however at the start of the performance the room was full and we were talking very clear and loud and still the public moved on to the next room and the next piece of art. This then opened up the issue of how the public know that we are inviting them to participate and watch for the duration of our performance and they are welcomed.
To make our performance successful there has to be a public participating and being spectators we are going to have to explore different ways we can invite them to do so.