T h e T O M A S p a c e
This exposition should be viewed in relation to Chapter 4; please go to the PDF below. As a visual documentation of the three protagonist roles and their activities undertaken with TOMA from its inception in 2016 to 2019. TOMA interviews with participants and a collection of TOMA ephemera as an archive are also accessed here; click on Box T. Significant are moments with TOMA 1 and 2, the TOMA Project Space and related educational workshops, weekenders, and exhibitions. The exposition is characterised by an emphasis on sound, particularly evident in its introduction of the TOMA Project Space. A concise introductory narrative delineates the roles of the Vigilant Observer, Articulate Detective, and Evaluative Contributor within the TOMA framework, contextualising their interactions within the space. Subsequently, a curated selection of enactments is showcased, each aligned with one of the three protagonist roles. Notably, TOMA's position within Genogram 1 serves as a central reference point
Title: Alternative to What? Exploring Alternative Art Schools Through Spatiality, Participation and Performative Tools
Elle Reynolds
You can find the exegesis on
the Nottingham Trent University Repository
The Evaluative Contributor had noted the previous year that the carriages on the C2C from Chalkwell Park to London Fenchurch Street were often empty late on Thursday evenings. This same train that started at Southend Central should be tested as a site for the ‘group crit’. What would the alternative look like if the crit took up the space of a train carriage for sixty minutes and if one or two people presented actions, ideas or forms of whatever they wished to reveal? The Evaluative Contributor considers the pedagogical model of the group critique and the constituent parts from which to consider the following propositions. How can The Other MA (TOMA) crit be disrupted to establish a different spatial formulation? What does a space that allows for conflictual consensus yet simultaneously offers equal power relationships look like? The Evaluative Contributor subverts the existing paradigm of the group crit, as a teacher (Emma) led, to a space that is facilitated, co-created and collectively determined.
The Evaluative Contributor creates opportunities to work with TOMA artists and to enter into other systems of making and doing. It was noticeable that we engaged primarily with the work and the material forms. We discussed the work in the moving space between Chalkwell and London Fenchurch Street. Sculptures were presented firstly by Gloria, we spent time proposing how the paper structures could be developed, their reproducibility and scalability, the luminosity and sense of movement when placed against the changing light emitting from the window. The informality and intimacy of the train carriage aided discussion; there wasn’t the expectation of entering into the institutional crit space of the verbose, and those who didn’t ordinarily speak became active. The second work was a reading, 'on the qualities of Luton', given by Dominic, adding an even greater dramaturgy with the vibrations and changing pace of the train.
The crit can be extended beyond the studio, and the TOMA space can be made more flexible; an effective group critique can emerge on a train journey back to London.
Train Scholé Poem 2
Light
Seascape
Masts
Blur
Landscape
Blur
Gesture
Pylons
Lines
Green
Blur
Concrete
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Orchestrating a Train Crit |
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Fixity |
Weekly, as a group crit, allows for communal and focussed use of travel and time. |
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Collaborators |
All are invited into the discursive space. Small group of five or six, less anxiety, more opportunities for the discursive, less space to be omitted. |
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Spatiality |
The informal space of the seated train carriage allows for everyone to be at the same level, it is less hierarchical spatially, less formal than the table or wall crit. No singular person dominates. The hosting of the crit is communal. As a hosting space train carriage disrupts the table and wall crit, moves outside the studio and gallery to conceive of other spaces. Encourages other imaginaries beyond the static studio space. Ego is kept in check; this is a dual-purpose public space to go from one place to another. |
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Audience |
There is an alertness and an unknowing, we are all guests in the moving space. Less a sense of spatial ownership and familiarity. The space is not necessarily the same each week, dependent on the train carriage and who else is present from TOMA. An open space that others may enter, including those outside of TOMA. |
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Procedure |
To test out actions, ideas or forms to reveal work in a private/public space. The crit is not required as a formalised assessment tool. There is then an opportunity to further disrupt the single speaker/presenter to audience format. |
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Modalities |
Allows a focus on one piece of work or a body of work. Can be considered in spaces outside of the gallery or wall space. Time, light and movement add multi modalities of presentation. |
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Duration |
The time of the train journey dictates the length of the crit presentations. Two presenters given 30 minutes each, this allows for considered discussion and participation.
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The Articulate Detective had worked in collaboration with the Evaluative Contributor to obtain access to the TOMA Project Space through a process of time-banking. The Articulate Detective entered the TOMA Project Space within the Royals Shopping Centre to explore how it was to make work in a space that was not primarily recognised or understood by others as an art school. How to get a sense of the TOMA Project Space, to get a sense of a repurposed space and a space of exchange, negotiating and collaboration, were the initial concerns for the protagonist's exploration. The Articulate Detective maintained a choreographic orientation, as a form of spatial investigation and process of mapping. This form of mapping within a choreographic modality extends the notion of the choreographic through indexing the physical and temporal parameters of the TOMA Project Space. A space within a shopping centre, with its particular forms of surveillance, whether that be the shoppers and seaside tourists looking in, the security cameras, or the controlled opening and closing times.
Distinctive tools were selected to be within, the TOMA Project Space. Initially applying what could be viewed as the language of the retail environment, the Articulate Detective engaged with the practice of adding text, making words and removing the vinyl letters, as can be seen in the moving image recording, Pillar. An exploration of the upstairs spaces not immediately visible to the TOMA visitor was mapped by the Articulate Detective through sonic investigations and a collaborative walking project featuring TOMA 2 artists. Walks through the void space were documented through sound recordings and still images. Presented here is A Void Walk 1 as a sound essay with still images. The essay captures the confined void spaces above the TOMA Project Space and the hidden infrastructures of a shopping centre and an alternative art school.
The choreographed exercises were tools for investigation, allowing the Articulate Detective to be embedded within the TOMA Project Space, creating new sites of engagement and durational zones through and with the TOMA artists. These choreographed exercises simultaneously held the spaces of making and looking, allowing for being within as both an exploration in and through the space. In generating sites of close looking, other spaces are created.
The Vigilant Observer enters the exhibition space.
The Vigilant Observer had carefully documented the conditions of TOMA exhibition spaces, the artworks, OSB display materials, curation, layout, supporting textual materials, audience, visitors, and the reception of the work before an invitation to be an active participant and exhibit work was forthcoming. The first exhibition invitation was to submit visual work on the theme ‘lists’. The Evaluative Contributor had submitted an old shopping list found in 2016 that featured only meat and fish items in a confident black cursive. Photographed on a dark wood tabletop, there was something nostalgic and a little austere about the list. The second piece the Vigilant Observer installed was one of the fold-out publications and appeared to blend seamlessly into a group show that had a preference for text works on paper. The A3 double-sided sheet documented TOMA exhibition spaces through photography and Scholé Poems.
Yet another work shown at Havens Department Store in the TOMA show ‘Everyone Must Go’ continued the theme of folding TOMA and pedagogy back in on itself as a self-referential motif. A repeated circular spoken work was created to accompany the TOMA Founder’s Art Teacher prints and a biomorphic soft structure as an immersive installation. The spoken piece of Art Teacher worked circularly, producing almost semantic satiation in its monotone delivery and repetition.
The spatial and temporal nature of Havens mirrored the teaching space that TOMA artists had access to. These interventions in the TOMA shows allowed the Vigilant Observer to observe the conditions of exhibiting within such multi-functioning F-Spaces, the spaces that TOMA consistently occupied. There were also operational attributes noted by the Vigilant Observer, one being the ability of the three protagonist roles to extend pedagogical surfaces, including those of exhibition space making.
