Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Spike Island, Bristol 21 October – 9 November
Reviewed by: Jennie Savage
In negating the hierarchy that exists in the gallery – between object and observer – Donachie subverts our expectations of the exchange between the work, the artist and the audience. Installing South as a site-specific response to the gallery at Spike Island, is an action that alters the viewer's relationship to the space, encouraging conversation over silence. South is a large circular, centrally heated platform in the centre of the gallery. It creates a space for visitors to sit and talk. Although a minimal intervention, the work could be viewed as process-based – the result of Donachie working alongside the community of eighty artists based at the studio complex.
South activates the gallery space, functioning as a catalyst for participation. The work becomes a point of mediation between the gallery, the artist-community and the visitor. It also exists as an object of minimal beauty placed within the building's spacious high-ceilinged gallery. In siting such an object as a meeting point, the space becomes politically charged, shifting the relationship between object and viewer to a place where the viewer's participation is subsumed into the object. The work becomes a performative intervention, its function or meaning activated by its usage.
Donachie often works site specifically and outside of the gallery, observing how local people use an area and then facilitating a place of meeting through the installation of a structure. South applies this same process within the gallery, raising questions about the changing relationships between artist, viewer and gallery space. The role of the artist shifts to facilitator of chance meetings; the instigator of the potential.
Writer detail:
JENNIE SAVAGE
is an artist and writer based in Cardiff.
jennie@jenniesavage.co.uk |
www.jenniesavage.co.uk
Venue detail:
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