‘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
'Block Beuys'
Hessisches Landesmuseum
The artist Joseph Beuys created his ‘Block Beuys’ installation in the 1960s and it consists of about 270 objects, arranged in seven rooms of varying sizes, and contains most of the forms and materials which we all associate with the artist, such as metal, felt, fat and food, machinery and newspapers.
Very early on in my research of the artist I had come across pictures of these installations and have kept them in my folder of inspiring images.
In preparation for my degree show project these images influenced me for the kind of installation I was trying to create.
Beuys’s rooms show a variety of materials (metaphors)and sculptures(symbols), manipulated, altered and brought together in unusual ways. The objects correspond to one another and, in their distinctive forms, refer to the artist’s work in its entirety.
The intention for my installation was to create an experimentation room, a kind of laboratory, where scientific and imaginary, manmade and natural objects and materials are mixed up, ‘speaking to each other’ and raise the curiosity of the viewer.