7. 18th April 2011. Caroline Wright.
Professional Context. Video Lecture.
Professional Context. Video Lecture.
Exploring notions of audience, and what they bring to an artwork.
Artists surrender works to other whims and views.
What is the encounter/experience/intention of the work, and what are the effect of showing work to the artist/audience.artwork.
Decisions in various contexts have effects on how people engage with and relate to the art.
Looking - who is looking, who is intended.
Do they glance or look - what is their motivation to look, and with what set of assumptions do people look. What meaning is conveyed beyond initial set of assumptions.
Looking can be appropriated and used for other purposes. The control once an image is public - beyond copyright.
Gillian Wearing - signs the juxtaposition of showing/saying . Stolen/pastiche by advertising - entered public consciousness.
Looking can be part of national pride/ power - the Elgin marbles debate.
Looking - entertainment, spectacle, fascination.
La Belle Hottentot - body as site for expostion/exploitation.
Explored by Lisa Wesley - Studio Starter. Uncomfortable looking at nude with bucket on her head.
Where is the control of the viewer's experience - strategies of choice. Looking is never free of outside influences.
The artistic intention - under control or beyond control?
Learn from responses to work.
There are all sorts of reasons to produce art - may or may not have control where it is placed.
To effectively engage the audience, we made need to establish why we make a work.
Audience - the viewer - the looker - the student. Various ways of encountering art.
Does the audience behave as a collective?
Institutional knowledge - draw, attract the attention of an audience, guide responses.
Can the collective human peer nature be manipulated? Can audience reaction be predicted? An artist can respond to that in making work.
"An excess of display has the effect of concealing the truth of the society that produces it, providing the viewer with an unending stream of images...detached from a real world of things...(we) see everything but understand nothing." Guy Debord. Society of the Spectacle.
In our visually rich culture it is the instant glimpse rather than conscious and intentional viewing.
What are the responsibilities of the artist and the viewer.
Roland Barthes - Image Music Text - "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author."
Work in the public domain no longer belongs to the artist. Control rests within the process, intention, and giving to the world.
Taking the audience into consideration. Who work is made for - audience/ artists/ commissioner/ gallery...
In making art, integrity and rigour, encompassing these questions:
Can I make work that is free of any constraints?
Is there a contextual requirement for the work?
Are there any other considerations?
Selling exhibitions - commission - gallery.
Artist has particular pressure to give value for money. the pressure of commerce.
In Seven Days in the Art World, by Sarah Thornton, she discusses how the reputation of the owner effects the reputation of the work.
How to retain professionalism within that context.
YBAs example, and Charles Saatchi making and breaking reputations and market price of artists.
To be a professional artist - what drives us to make/show work.
An audience of one - the risk of self indulgence?
Helen Paris - co Curious. when do you consider the audience - from the start.
The level of relationship with the viewer, even on a wall on a gallery.
Levels of mediation - curator, gallerist, critic, etc, can subvert the artists intention.
Jeremy Deller - miner's film. Carsten Holler - slides in Tate Modern - these works directly engage with the audience. Is the successful real experience unmediated?
How to do that with work not interactive. - perhaps Bridget Riley paintings - the riot of visual attention retain in the mind beyond moment of engagement.
Successful works engage the audience in debate. Unpick how we wish audiences to engage, relate to and debate our work.
"We all have our own creative strategies, but, personally, I don't think that wilful ignorance or self delusion is ever a good thing. Most artists who have gained recognition of some kind have a pretty clear picture of the world that first receives their art." Sarah Thornton.
Look at recent work made and show. Reflect on past exhibitions and response. Have they met expectation. Challenge the notions and respond. The MA time ideal fulcrum.
Reflection
I found this lecture interesting and apt in that I often think of the viewer of my art, and consider these complex notions to do with art and galleries and my own relationship with art and galleries as a viewer.
I think of the viewer of my own work as a collection of individuals. I try to give people more reason and motive to take a second look and a third look and a deeper look in this age of visual imagery. In a way it is tricking the viewer. I have done some art research about visual fatigue, and how long the eye is interested in an image without it changing - what pace of change keeps the eye looking. That's probably why I am more moved to make moving image than photography. For me a piece of work must try to work at many levels simultaneously - the glance, the second look, the deeper look, the memory, the retinal residue - the visual impact. I aim to cover all bases, invite the glancing eye as well as the slow burner. The "get it" look as well as deeper contemplation.
Reflecting on previous exhibited work and reactions. I think mainly of my solo exhibition from 2007, Viewer, which was all interactive contemporary work on vintage equipment.
I learned many things from that exhibition, but regarding audience reaction, my hopes were exceeded. I think audiences like engaging with art, working it out for themselves, and they are comfortable with ambiguity. I also conclude that art should give alot to the viewer, and offer ways in that need not be difficult and confrontational. The most complex things can be said simply.
18th April 2011
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