Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
October 2002 – 31 July 2003
Reviewed by: Tom Freshwater
Since October 2002, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has seen a number of unusual events: monks washing floors, indoor archaeological excavations, families reunited only to be split apart once more. Or has it? In the fictive art of Roma Tearne, artist-in-residence with the Department of Antiquities at the museum, nothing is quite what it seems.
The programme of work has been developed from an initial framework created by the artist in response to the museum: the collections, the building, its staff, history and visitors. An installation and accompanying text (available as both handout and web page) has been produced each month, including an invitation for those affected by the work to respond to the artist. Opportunities to meet the artist have been provided by periodic drop-in sessions in the museum galleries, and both channels have fed into subsequent phases of the work.
Such a project could follow a predictable pattern of 'museum art', whereby a variation on the following game is played out: the museum environment is used to lend authority to false exhibits which are in turn read as authentic artefacts. Artistic practice in this vein therefore appropriates the structures and vocabulary of a historic museum to create an art critical of its formative institution.
Instead, Tearne's work takes the expected authority of the institution and renders it strange: the first installation tells of the ghost of a murdered monk that was witnessed washing the floor of an exhibition gallery prior to the mysterious appearance of hundreds of bound and suspended silver and bone fish knives. Claiming to commemorate a forgotten death – the museum staff of international scholars were surprised to learn their museum had stood on the ground of a formerly unknown abbey –the knives are not false artefacts, but props in a fictional account played out by actors. New histories and archaeologies are being created, but they are expressed in a fashion distinct from the anticipated rhetoric of the museum: the themes are literary as well as artistic, involving the exploration of human character and action within the fictions and beyond.
A developing relationship between text and object is evident in Tearne's work: each exists to validate the other and both contribute towards a common narrative. The happenings – as each monthly event of installation and text has been termed – are varied. Some are presented as if characters have vacated a scene – one such work features a covered entrance to a subterranean excavation – while others demand a more symbolic reading. A memorial to a dead woman includes a portrait bound with cloth, and white candles coated with black wax. The use of bone and silver and the implied presence of fish to tell the story of Christian murder is a deliberate choice.
For those in the know, the reflexivity of the work upon the host institution enhances its meaning – the memorial portraits are actually members of the museum staff in their youth. But this approach may also hamper the successful delivery of the work to the uninitiated. Promotion of the residency within the museum is minimal amounting to a small mention on the museum's web page. An introductory leaflet to the project, including a map locating the installations, could be of great use to visitors. The leaflet racks designed to hold accompanying texts for each installation were empty. While attesting to the popularity of the works, the missing texts hinder appreciation of the project to those unable to get hold of them.
In a bizarre twist, a real individual who claims to be a friend of the dead/fictional heroine of Tearne's work has contacted the artist. It is such occurrences that demonstrate the power of the project – the release of narratives into the world that take up their own momentum within the lives of others. However, unless it is given the opportunity to do so, the work may well pass by the casual visitor as a mere inexplicable curiosity.
Writer detail:
TOM FRESHWATER
is collections manager at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.
mail@tomfreshwater.com |
www.tomfreshwater.com
Venue detail:
Ashmolean Museum
Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH
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