Another showing for Seep, at Parlous Arts gallery in London, as part of The Body Sublime exhibition.
This time I will get to see the piece in another context - amongst sublime bodies.
Seep. Eleanor MacFarlane. digital video still. 2009
I had to write an additional statement about Seep and the sublime:
Seep and the Sublime
Time seeps into our lives, as we seep into the overlaying membranes of our selves.
..........
Rather defying definition, my favoured interpretation of the Sublime is an agreeable kind of horror (Joseph Addison, 1699). We are drawn to look, and see into the depths. Perhaps the Sublime image is one we can lose ourselves in, and think our deepest thoughts, those without limit. The body is a language we all understand, written in feelings and our experience of time. Sometimes dysmorphic, our own experience of the self is ripe with profound messages.
It's so fascinating to see a piece in different situations - this is Seep's second group show, and it has also been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery. It would be an interesting exercise to build an entire art career out of showing the same piece all over the world in all sorts of venues. I once wrote an essay about having seen the same group exhibition in two venues in London and Prague. How differently the art came across with the variation in context. The London show was a warehousey, contemporary white brick wall place, while in Prague the work was hung in the most decorative, baroque setting, literally upon flock wall paper. I always thought it is the hallmark of art with integrity that it may survive disadvantageous venues, and still more or less say what was intended, rather than become subsumed by surroundings.
Even so, no background is neutral. It becomes part of the art, and the experience.
23rd February 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment