‘Who Will Provide’ Exhibition at The Crypt Gallery
31/10 – 4/11 2018
Our group of thirty three MFA students explored and responded to themes relating to charity and its place in today’s world. The exhibition presented a collection of site specific works, ranging from painting to sculpture, assemblage to video through to performance and photography.
Before the summer break preparations started by putting together various teams to properly organise and execute the event. The members of the research team responded to the site by looking into its history, connecting it to its past and designed the theme ’Who Will Provide?’ around the wish list, a document from 1995 which outlined the desired purpose for the building. This included shelter and provision for the homeless, serving the nearby student population and a focal point for community activities.
I volunteered to join the Installation Team. Over the summer I visited the crypt twice with the view to inform myself about the site (wall space, wall and ceiling heights, location of electrical outlets etc.) and to explore a potential location for my own work.
Two weeks prior to the event the curating team got in touch and supplied our team with a list of required tools and materials. We also received technical information on some more complicated works and installing requirements from The Crypt Gallery itself (No drilling of new holes!). There was very good collaboration between curating and installation team and minor installation problems were efficiently dealt with.
SKILLS: HANDLING ARTWORK, COLLABORATION, PROBLEM SOLVING, ATTENTION TO DETAIL,
SITE SPECIFIC WORKING
Joan Jonas - Tate Modern
London 14/3-5/8 2018
‘My work is all about layering, because that’s the way our brains function. We think of several things at the same time. We see things and think another, we see one picture and there’s another picture on top of it. I think in a way my work represents that way of seeing the world- putting things together in order to say something’. Joan Jonas, 2016
This exhibition, the first retrospective of her work here in Britain, certainly references the multiple layers Joan Jonas mentions in the above quote. This artist is best known for her performance and video work and maker of large-scale installations.More recent works deal with themes of climate change and extinction. An interpreter of folktales and myths, she incorporates props, scripts, sets, costumes, sound, music, choreography and drawing into her work -all to be found in this multimedia installation at Tate Modern.
There is certainly a lot to take in whilst walking through the many rooms, experiencing the full force of a life time’s work. Some of it works well, for instance the installations in the tanks as the whole set up seems to respond to the gloomy surroundings and is well spaced. At other times it makes for a kind of complicated, difficult viewing, particularly if one likes to follow a narrative in artworks. Performance moves to installation to video (sometimes several video screens) to dance to storytelling. Props and drawings are accompanied by voices and music, directional speakers are meant to give you a feeling of ‘being in there’ and one could feel overwhelmed with so much going on.
Installation art intends to create a situation into which the viewer physically enters and to regard the space and the ensemble within
it as a singular entity. The viewer's sense of touch, smell and sound is heightened as is the sense of vision.
Her works here move constantly back and forth between elements, a mode of constant interruption.
Apparently deliberately used by Jonas, the artist certainly pushes the boundaries of installation art.
