A–Z Display Units (After Kiesler & Krischanitz) 2015–2020
(2020)
author(s): Gavin Wade
published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University
Art is not exhibited. Art Exhibits – Gavin Wade, 2012.
Wade’s practise and research challenges the nature and understanding of art’s primary function as an exhibition. His work expands the artist-curator role through his development of new systems of display. These draw on historical precedents creating sculptural mediations between artists, curators, and publics. He proposes transformative artworks as social systems and temporal experiences, always requiring collaboration with others. Drawing from studies of ‘useful art’, ‘artist and engineering’, ‘support structures’ (Condorelli and Wade, 2009) and referencing Artist Placement Group’s concept ‘context is half the work’, his output informs understandings of ‘when artists curate’ (Green, 2018) and the ‘transhistorical museum’ (Demeester, 2018).
Wade’s remodelling and extending of a series of ‘Display Units’ use a process of ‘upcycling’, a term Wade uses to describe his method. In 2015 Wade started developing artworks upcycled from the ‘L and T–Type Display Units’ (Frederick Kiesler,1924) and referencing the ‘Vienna Secession Mobile Wall System’ (Adolf Krischanitz,1986). Wade’s synthesizing method is generating a new A–Z alphabet Display Unit system as part of the process of re-imagining curatorial activities as a form of art practice. His Upcycle This Book (2017), nominated for the European Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste, presents 26 texts on this work and 12 Display Unit drawings.
Wade created Display Units for ‘Display Show’(2015), exhibited in Dublin, Birmingham and Netherlands – funded by ACE/British Council International Artists Development Award. Christopher Williams (USA), Eilis McDonald (IRE) and Leeds Weirdo Club (UK) were collaborating artists.
Wade worked with Frans Hals Museum collection to create ‘Z is for ZOO’ (2017) exploring the transhistorical potential of his ‘Z-Type’ and ‘T-Type’ Display Units, artworks purchased by the museum.
His writing for ‘Display Show’ provided the provocation for ‘That Art Exhibits’: EARN Conference, Brussels (2016). Wade was the invited keynote speaker.
An Obstract for Midpointness
(2018)
author(s): Andrew Bracey, Steve Dutton
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Our aim here is to both provide a response to the Conference ‘Please Specify!’ and to find an alternate way of ensuring that the intrinsic generative nature of research and art is kept active, akin to the mobius strip-like path of both conclusions, and openings.
“Midpointness” is a generative project. It is dismantled and reconstructed through the gradual accretion of surrounding connections, associations and influences of the curators, artists, students and other audiences who contribute to it. These are in the form of artworks, public events, texts, artefacts, performances or other interventions. 'An Obstract for Midpointness' (Obstract)is a piece of artistic research constructed before, during and after, "PLEASE SPECIFY!", The SAR Annual Conference 2017.
'Obstract' is as an element of the ongoing project “Midpointness” that seeks to invite us to consider the ‘work’ of art as art’s labour or task. We seek to explore the dynamics of inner/outer dialogues of the process of artistic work, opening up other potentials that an artist researcher might hope for when he/she explores the generative potential of the work of artistic research directly within and in response to a conference about artistic research.
At the centre is spoken text that is a play on the tradition of the conference ‘abstract.’ The abstract is the site of an outline of intention, yet here we couple it with an ‘obstruction’ as a means of aggravating and diverting the attempt at a conclusion towards which an abstract, and indeed a formal presentation, might be aimed. “Obstract” suggests, by a process of intervention that the ‘centre’ (the work and/or the text) and its surrounding universe are completely indivisible. As such the principle of ‘footnotes’ filter through to the whole spoken text; the footnotes being analogous to the surrounding constellations within which the ‘centre’ of the work sits, swapping footnotes for centre and vice versa. The footnotes refer to points both real and imagined in the past, present and future.
Ghost Nature
(2015)
author(s): Caroline Picard
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The predominant cultural tradition prioritises humankind and human culture above all other life forms – a linear, anthropocentric narrative wherein the human appears as the latest, most developed draft of life in a grand opera of consciousness; the opera begins with the origin of a universe that has since continued until now, forward from the darkest beginning of A to an elusive horizon of B: that spot in the distance that shall never be reached. The following exposition reflects notes, quotations, and autobiographical incidents that muddle this mythology. This assemblage of sources composes a constellation without beginning, centre, or end in an effort to enact a more general and omniscient intellectual environment that highlights the longstanding hierarchical expectations inherent in the Western world.
Eight to Infinite
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Alex Jovcic-Sas
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Eight to Infinite is an exciting collaborative project between electronic artist Afrodeutsche and PhD researcher, Alex Jovčić-Sas. The aim is to revise two unknown historical composers, Gertrud Grunow (Bauhaus) and Daphne Oram (BBC), by writing, recording, and performing a new work that uses their archival materials combined with contemporary digital compositional tools. Grunow and Oram worked with optical sound as a process for composing music, specifically focusing on colours and shapes as compositional tools. They both have been largely overlooked within their respective institutional histories and this project will bring to life their unique and rich compositional practices.
Eight to Infinite took place on the 7th of October 2021, at the Space at Nottingham Contemporary. Eight to Infinite was generously funded by Arts Council England, Midlands4Cities, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Contemporary, and PRS Foundation.
Las guerras púdicas
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Lorena Croceri
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In this exhibition I develop the concept of responsibility linked to performance art. Through the analysis of the performative installation Las guerras púdicas, I make an approach to the curated integration of fields: cultural practice of cooking, contemporary art, psychoanalysis, synoptic charts and language of war.
The predominant cultural tradition prioritises humankind and human culture above all other life forms – a linear, anthropocentric narrative wherein the human appears as the latest, most developed draft of life in a grand opera of consciousness; the opera begins with the origin of a universe that has since continued until now, forward from the darkest beginning of A to an elusive horizon of B: that spot in the distance that shall never be reached. The following exposition reflects notes, quotations, and autobiographical incidents that muddle this mythology. This assemblage of sources composes a constellation without beginning, centre, or end in an effort to enact a more general and omniscient intellectual environment that highlights the longstanding hierarchical expectations inherent in the Western world.open exposition comments (0)
In this exhibition I develop the concept of responsibility linked to performance art. Through the analysis of the performative installation Las guerras púdicas, I make an approach to the curated integration of fields: cultural practice of cooking, contemporary art, psychoanalysis, synoptic charts and language of war.open exposition comments (0)