Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
For this double issue Reviews has a special focus on art in the public realm.
Reviewed by: Chris Brown
For many artists, the motives for working beyond the confines of the gallery are rooted in the political – whether personal, collective, or universal. The reasons may be in reaction – whether to the gallery system, or a wider or more general concern – or that the public realm can offer the artist a far less systematic, if not less problematic, approach to creating and presenting work.
Since art commonly seeks to disrupt the status quo, it follows that those artists utilising the public space do so for peaceful protest within their practice. The project ‘Life is interesting... when you're furious’ takes as its historical basis the Paris student uprising in 1968. As Tom Duggan observes, this backdrop may be necessary to remind our politically inert society of the significance of the act of protest. Conversely, for some artists the public realm offers the opportunity for far more subtle or covert protest. Emma Cocker’s essay discusses the practice of wandering and considers the significance that such “pedestrian creativity and resistance” can have. Particularly in the shopping precinct or office village where one's movements are largely predetermined, the act of “willful disorientation” could be regarded as no less subversive than the protest march or industrial strike.
The act of releasing art from the confines of the gallery or museum can be simultaneously liberating and problematic. The gallery’s role in mediating between artwork and viewer is lost, often leading to misinterpretation. Physical artworks are laid bare for vandalism. Another issue is raised in Emily Candela’s review of ‘Paradise Revealed’, the locations for which query the definition of public realm by delineating an “increasingly privatised landscape”. Such venues are sometimes less willing to advocate works that challenge the status quo too vociferously, as Matt Roberts discovers in his review of ‘Transmit/Transmettre’.
This summer sees a host of other projects and events taking place beyond the gallery walls:
Whitstable Biennale, 21 June – 6 July
www.whitstablebiennale.com
Folkestone Triennial, 14 June – 14 September
www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk
Portavilion, various locations, London, June – September
www.upprojects.com/portavilion
Writer detail:
Chris Brown, a-n Reviews editor.
chris.brown.an@gmail.com |
www.g39.org
Venue detail:
No one has commented on this article yet, why not be the first?
To post a comment you need to login
Back to top