An excellent art blog to follow, put together by someone who gets about and follows the latest trends http://blog.art21.org/

To see what your peers at Leeds University are doing go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/14-seconds/85481931910?v=wall&viewas=726666618

All my postings regarding when shows are on etc are taken from LVAF. Leeds Visual Arts Forum. To join the list serve go to http://www.lvaf.org.uk/view.aspx?id=3

Today is the hand in for Audiences. I was planning on stopping adding to this blog from today. If there is a need for it to continue please comment.

Dear Emma the link www.blogspot.com/emma555587 does not access your blog, can you provide the correct address?

The image is of an etymological history of the word 'art'. It may help clarify how what we have now is a shifting concept.
Click to enlarge.

Hi everyone, Louisa here. I will be in Berlin this week and so I won't see you, although I will still be looking at your blogs. I wondered if anyone from REM or STIMPY would like a quick tutorial (15 mins)with me on the Monday before the deadline, the 11th, to tie up loose ends regarding your work and your submission for the module, or just for a general chat about your project. I am available all day from 10 till 5.If you would find this useful, email me on lmp.audiences@yahoo.co.uk with a time that would suit you.

One way of reaching new audiences is through self publishing. There are two very good sites for this.

http://www.lulu.com/

www.blurb.com

You can have individual bound copies made for very reasonable prices and then order more when you have a need for them. Perhaps I'm in a book mind at the moment. I'm looking at Charlotte Salomon's 'Life? or Theatre?' If I get too stressed this book is a life saver. You know when they ask you "which book would you take to your desert island" well this is mine.

Just in from James Hill. This is a great opportunity.

Just a reminder to you all that, if you're planning to submit an Expressionof Interest Form to take part in this year's Light Night as an artist, the deadline for submission is fast approaching - 30th April. Forms can be downloaded from the website: http://www.lightnightleeds.co.uk If you'd like to talk through your idea first, please call James Hill on(0113) 247 8234 or email James.Hill@leeds.gov.uk Don't forget to put as much information as possible on your form as this is what will be used to write the information for the Light Night information brochure. If you've already sent your form in, thank you! We've had loads of amazing ideas but would like to hear more. If you know anyone who's not on LVAF (fools!) but might be interested in getting involved, then pass the message on. Love, the Light Night team. x www.lightnightleeds.co.uk

A couple of interesting stories from the Guardian this week that could be useful in terms of thinking about public and audiences.
A new public sculpture for St Helens is unveiled, Dream by Jaume Plensa http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/22/dream-jaume-plensa-st-helens

I little while ago I posted a link to a Guardian article on how empty shops in the high street were being seen as potential exhibition sites, things seemed to have moved on quickly and as the article states, “Giving artists space on the high street helps demystify the process of creating art, taking it away from the private studio and putting it into the shop front; spaces don't come much more accessible than your former Marks & Spencer or Woolies. How many people outside the art world ever get the chance to see an artist at work?” http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/23/artists-take-over-empty-shops
This looks as if it could be a very good opportunity for someone with a bit of initiative.

Usually public art is dealt with by setting up commissions such as this one http://www.lanarts.com/?q=node/2463 The contact for this commission is Vanessa Scarth the public arts officer for Leeds. It would be interesting to find out if she has any plans or suggestions for how artists could be responding to the ‘space on the high street’ agenda.

For those of you interested in public art, go to the link below for a set of downloadable guidelines and policies. You may find it useful as if and when any of you get involved in this type of work (and it is a growing area) you will have to be aware of any policy documents associated with the agency/s you would be working with.
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/resources/practicaladvice/policiesguidance/policies_outside_uk/landcom.php

East Street Arts is an organisation all of you should be aware of. This is their latest posting.
UNITED
Eight weeks of events exploring the status of `the artist' incontemporary arts activity Organised by: East Street Arts (ESA), Leeds
Dates: Friday 1 May – Saturday 27 June 2009
Times: Events have set dates/times, please see www.esaweb.org.uk<http://www.esaweb.org.uk/> for details
Price: FREE ADMISSION / Fully AccessibleVenue: Various centres around Leeds - please see www.esaweb.org.uk<http://www.esaweb.org.uk/> for details
Using contemporary arts practitioners as a starting point, ESA explores how collective and collaborative events can take shape to express andshare ideas. Involving a whole host of artists both from Leeds and further afield and referencing workers unions and other representative bodies, UNITED will examine how the professional field of art operates without formal structures, resulting in a supportive and independentseries of events that reflect the artist-driven sector and the many facets of social networks.UNITED highlights include London based Daniel Lehan and Leeds artists/designers Nous Vous hosting a weekend workshop event that will precede a march through the city centre of Leeds exploring notions of identity within the workforce and blurring the boundaries of`artist' and `participant'; Leeds based artists Kristy Noble and Tom Poultney's exhibition Day Off questioning virtual networksand asking if these new communication channels have overtaken traditional leisure pursuits and local artist Megan Smith's performance which will focus on the contemporary experience of operating within multiple locations, cultures and spaces simultaneously by using her Second Life avatar to embody this digital domain.
For the full UNITED programme, please see www.esaweb.org.uk<http://www.esaweb.org.uk/>

Louisa here
Everyone who came to a tutorial has a good idea of what I would like them to present for assessment. Anyone who missed a tutorial can email me on lmp.audiences@yahoo.co.uk

Louisa again, please send me any Stimpy URls, I still have two or three missing.

Audiences assessment
Deadline for this module is 9.30am 12th May.
Feedback week beginning 18th May. Feedback times will be posted and I presume linked to the times for feedback for your materials module.

What you will need to present.
For people not using a blog. Journals, art work done in direct response to the brief, sketchbooks and written report/evaluation/rationale.
For people using a blog. It could be all of the above if you feel the blog does not represent what you have done. However if the blog is a thorough reflection that includes comprehensive illustrations it may be just the blog. It’s your call, but remember it’s always better to be cautious and a belt and braces approach is fine. If it is just the blog, we need to know this is a conscious choice. So for assessment you need to put up an A4 print-off of your name, name and full URL address of your blog and a statement that says that all of the evidence for the assessment is contained on your blog.

A reminder of the brief outcomes.
For 20 marks. Apply and research primary and secondary sources
A primary source could be a particular site you have visited. So application of this might be your work sited in this place or a drawing/collage etc demonstrating how your work would look if sited there. A secondary source could be a book on a particular artist or a web-site. Again it needs to be applied, so an image that demonstrates that you were responding to the research done would be useful. In particular a reflection on how well or badly the piece worked adds to the evidence.
For 40 marks. Explore the contextual and professional location of their creative practice and its relationship to publics and audiences.
This exploration is both practical and theoretical. The contextual and professional location obviously points to work done such as reflecting on galleries and public art works. It also suggests that you have engaged with the wider debate as to what the profession entails; curation, the role of the critic, dealer etc etc and how audiences may receive / understand what is happening. It is also expected that you will have done something practical in response to this. Again this may be work sited in public, proposals for work or a reflection on why your work is not suitable for public reception.
For 40 marks. Realise a synthesis between concept and creative practice
This is the area where you need to position your work. Positioning work is about taking a stance. E.g. My work is shown in this way because… We will be looking for work that clearly demonstrates that it is the result of explorative thinking and looking. We will be looking for work that is a result of engaging with the main theoretical elements of the module. This includes presentation, so if you are not actually presenting artwork, you will need to show how you have thought about this. It may be that the way you are presenting the work for the materials module is a result of thinking done in audiences. If this is the case an annotated photograph or reflection within the blog could act as evidence.
So to summarise. The marks will be derived from a combination of evidence.
Studio practice is often evidenced through performance or portfolio of images. The blog should therefore consist of images as well as text. The images should evidence both contextual and professional location of practice, (i.e. all the stuff collected and responded to when thinking about exhibition site and context) as well as showing some actual work or proposed work that evidences a synthesis between concept and creative practice. (This could be a series of collages that demonstrates how your work would look if shown on the High Street)
Project report minimum 500 words, could be the actual text of your blog. 500 words would be a minimum, I would expect if you keep a blog up to be rather more than that. One way you might want to think of your report is as a last blog entry. If writing a report on paper, please can it be word processed?

I will be looking at REN and Louisa at STIMPY, but we will also do some double marking as standardisation. I will paste my written feedback into your last blog’s comment box. You will also get your feedback in the traditional way.

All modules are supposed to receive feedback from students as to how it went etc You will be getting those module feedback sheets to fill in as normal, but they don’t record any actual issues and only reflect a numerical statistic. So it would be useful if finally you could give us some feedback on the module. The easiest way to do this is to use the comment box attached to this blog. In particular we are interested in how you responded to the blog format.

Also if you cant find your blog address in the list at the front of my blog, it means I havnt found your blog yet. Please send me your URL!!

Finally. Don’t forget to look at the old posts on this blog. I have tried to spend 15 minutes a day inputting information that might be useful. So if you don’t know what to reflect on just respond to some of my stuff. The other issue is that other students are doing this. Make sure you look at what they are saying and doing. The point about this technology is that you can share. You may of course take the opportunity to feedback on my blog. What should it have included? Was it any use to you? Should we continue with this in the future?

A few resources that you may find useful in thinking about how to link practice with theory.

The best contemporary book on curating is O'Neill, P. Ed. (2007) Curating Subjects London: Open Editions
If you want to look at just one book on public art you could try Eccles, T (2004) PLOP Recent projects of the Public Art Fund London: Merrell. The book just looks at New York and these are mainly temporary installations. However it might be interesting to reflect on how the works illustrated would be received by a Leeds audience.
If you are thinking about how important location is when trying to communicate with your audience try Massey, D (2006) For Space London: Sage. She argues that space is where politics, social change, co-existence with others and the imagination resides. It is therefore vital for us to situate space at the centre of our awareness of audience. Where people engage with information can be as important as the information itself.
Useful web links that may help you think about issues related to Audiences.
Constructing audiences, defining art. Public Art and social research. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/buchholzwuggenig/en/print
On Northern art audiences. People in the north of England are not sophisticated enough to appreciate major works of art, it has been claimed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2658785.stm
Conceptual art and contemporary audiences http://www.kellysherman.net/images/MartensKatelyn-ConceptualArtAndContemporaryAudience.pdf
Viewing the viewers An Ethnographic Study of Contemporary Visual Art Audiences. http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/UserFiles/File/National%20Conference/2007/JanineSager_ConferencePaper07.pdf
Go to http://www.jstor.org if you want to research journals. A useful journal article is: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, 203-223 (2007) Contemporary art's audiences. Specialist accreditation and the myth of inclusion by Spyros Sifakakis
Some books that examine the art world and its audiences
Derrick Chong in Iain Robertson, Understanding International Art Markets And Management, Routledge, 2005
Chin-Tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980s, Verso, 2002
Peter Timms, What's Wrong with Contemporary Art?, UNSW Press, 2004
George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, University of California Press, 1995
Mary Jane Jacob and Michael Brenson, Conversations at the Castle: Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art, MIT Press, 1998

http://www.garrybarkeronline.com/

It’s worth looking at the work of Timorous Beasties. Their Glasgow Toile is a textile fabric designed to look like typical Toile de Jouy wallpaper, but on closer inspection you realise it depicts Glasgow drunks. Trading on audience expectations, their work uses traditional domestic surfaces and is designed to be used as well as appreciated for its conceptual precision. See images above.

Another Leeds gallery space I have never mentioned; Harewood House. There is an issue here though, they charge entry fees and you have to get a bus to get there. The 36 from opposite the Grand Theatre. However like all the other art spaces mentioned it will have specific characteristics that can be examined. It is perhaps an ideal space within which to practice your critical theory writing. In the art gallery or museum, you are watched while you look. Foucault sees the art gallery as a place in which cultural values are authorized and specific behaviours encouraged as a means to produce socially acquired knowledge. However Lacan’s concept of the Gaze demonstrates how processes of display in the museum or art gallery produce cultural knowledge/cultural capital by a process of ownership. See others watching you acquire your cultural capital whilst adding to the coffers of the aristocracy. Even so, Michael Raedecker and Graham Crowley are both fine painters and I shall probably go just to see their work. Harewood House also has an El Greco on show and an excuse to see that is always a good one.

Home Truths, Harewood House, 3rd April - 5th July 2009 To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the laying of Harewood House's foundation stone, this exhibition entitled 'Home Truths' explores the powerful concept of home, what is home and what home means to us all. JMW Turner's watercolours of Harewood House were the catalyst to the exhibition. Rarely seen in public due to the risk of fading, this series of work epitomises much of the thought process behind the exhibition: a naturalistic style set against a backdrop of contrived landscape design. Home Truths places a broad range of works of contemporary art alongside pieces from Harewood's own collections of paintings, furniture and ceramics. It aims to inspire discussion and debate by juxtaposing historic and contemporary works and placing both within new contexts in order to challenge our notions of `home'. Some of the works are not for the faint hearted, borrowed from renowned galleries around Europe, such as London's Saatchi Gallery, acclaimed artists such as Michael Raedecker, David Thorpe, Graham Crowley, Sarah Woodfine, Kerry Harker and George Shaw show their work alongside the masters. Extraordinary modern works of art sit alongside extraordinary works and furnishings of the 1800s. Others fit naturally within the home initiative with architectural plans of Harewood at its concept, combined with today's plans for our own homes of the 21st century. The Home Truths Exhibition opens at Harewood House on Friday 3 April and continues until Sunday 5 July 2009 (Open every day 12noon - 4pm). Entrance to the exhibition is free with a House and Grounds ticket.

How to find us

Harewood is located: 7 miles between Leeds and Harrogate on the A61;10 miles from Leeds/Bradford Airport; 22 miles from York; 5 milesfrom A1 and 8 miles from A1/M1 link. The No.36 Bus to Harewood from Leeds and Harrogate travels every 20 minutes daily from Central Leeds. Entry to Harewood is half price with your bus ticket. Entry to Harewood is free all day on Wednesdays for individuals with a valid NUS or ISIC card. http://www.harewood.org/

At the opposite end of the spectrum there is another opening at MAP. Friday 17th April (6 till 11pm)

Goldfish 17th to 21st April
MAP, Hope House, 65 Mabgate, Leeds, LS9 7DR
Inquiries 07814459032 Facebook event Search “Goldfish MAP”

One last thing, have you ever tried writing an exhibition review. See: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=429&storycode=3136570&c=2
It’s a review on Asta Gröting’s show at the Henry Moore Institute. As an artist you may at times have to do this sort of work to broaden your portfolio. What’s interesting here is that the review is written for an audience of architects.

Probably the best known artists who spend a lot of time thinking about how large scale work can be presented are Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Their relationship itself is interesting, as she tends to deal with the project management side of things while he concentrates on how ideas are visualised. See http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/
One area I haven’t mentioned is visualisation of ideas, so that potential audiences can see what might be constructed and so (in Christo’s case) that fund raising exhibitions of the drawings can be held. Christo’s drawings are a wonderful example of how traditional skills can be utilised as part of this process. Skills in image selection, linear perspective rendering, mark making, composition and control of atmospheric perspective all combine to give his drawings a conviction that perhaps a computer generated 3D model would not have. However an artist like Michael Pinsky http://www.michaelpinsky.com/ uses computer generated imagery to visualise many of his projects and the feedback from commissioners is that one of the reasons he gets so many good public art commissions is that his visualisations are so strong. See the image of the 'radio building' above. Whether you use collage, CGI or drawing, visualisation skills are vital to any artist thinking of working publicly. This is one of the areas we will be looking for evidence of when we come to assess this module.

As this blog is mainly centred on issues of communication, there are a few things you may want to consider. In particular you will have to demonstrate that you have reflected in some depth on the key issues of audiences and how they are communicated with. Therefore when you look at your work within another context or possible site, be it gallery or outside you could perhaps choose one of the concepts below as a starting point for a dialogue.

Communication is often about relational patterns of interaction. When two people communicate they are also defining their relationship by the ways that they interact. Sometimes these reactions reinforce expectations and at other times you engage in new patterns of interaction that may establish new expectations for future interactions. Patterns get established because behaviour is itself communicative. So how do artists and audiences establish a pattern of relational control? In some cases the audience may have the relational control. For instance a gallery owner may insist on an artist staying with the same style. In other cases an artist may be in control. For instance Damien Hirst has subverted the normal position of the artist by dealing directly with Sotherby’s.

If you take a critical look at questions of privilege and power within the art world, you will be able to focus on how these are the products of social difference. These differences may be to do with colour, age, sexual orientation, religion, regional affiliation, income level, language, education etc. The key question is, who does and who does not get to ‘speak’ or communicate in these relationships? Therefore what does not get said? For instance for many years art galleries had been the place where men showed paintings they had done of women. What is not ‘said’ in this case, is anything by women. Do you find any resonance with this in your own life as a student artist?

Many communication theories explore the way signs and symbols operate within certain ‘linguistic fields’. In this case the field is that of art and its discourses. Semiotics explores the relationship between the world of things and the world of signs. It makes us aware that signs are not just the intentional ones. For example; in an art exhibition the art works may be ‘saying’ one set of things, but the gallery itself may be ‘saying’ something different. A typical case is that of the artist trying to be very egalitarian and who may be concerned to praise the efforts of working class people in his or her work, whilst the gallery that shows the work only caters for the rich middle classes.

It may be that that you are more in favour of using direct experiences to reflect on communication. If so you would have to decide whether or not experience is objective or subjective. If the former you may want to read Husserl and if the later Merleau-Ponty. Most contemporary theorists would side with Merleau-Ponty. The key issue for him is that things do not exist in and of themselves apart from how they are known. Thus the world of things and events exists in a give and take or dialogic relationship. An extension of this is ‘hermeneutic phenomenology’; your thoughts resulting from speech, because meaning itself is created by your speech. This can be related to Marshall Mcluhan’s phrase ‘the medium is the message’. The media specificity of communication being something you can reflect on when you are assessing audience reaction or assessing your own ‘reading’ of a situation.

Those of you with a more logical cast of mind may want to investigate systems theory. Systems are sets of interacting components that together form a communication field, within which each part is constrained by its dependence on other parts. In the art world, you could say that the system is an interdependence between, artists, galleries, collectors, audiences, art education, curators, critics, dealers etc etc. You may want to concentrate on how this system works and examine how it manages to sustain itself within a changing environment.

An opening to go to.
It would be useful to fit this in if you have not written about how audiences engage with any shows/exhibition spaces yet or just need to deepen your engagement with how art is displayed or curated. In this case you could consider exploring the issues surrounding themed exhibitions. Also the relationship between the work and the document/catalogue could be reflected on. After all, it's just over the road.
The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery
Parkinson Building
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
0113 343 2778
gallery@leeds.ac.ukwww.leeds.ac.uk/gallery
The Object of Photography
7 April-19 June 2009
Opening Tuesday 7 April 2009 6.00-8.00pm
Four Yorkshire-based artists - Ignaz Cassar, Hondartza Fraga, Joe Mawson and Andrew Warstat - explore the medium of photography itself as their subject. The artists respond to and critique photography and theories of photography in a variety of media, using traditional and digital photographic formats, collage, drawing, installation and animation. Playful and subtle treatments of the photographic process show that there is more to the medium than meets the eye. A full-colour catalogue with new essays on the artists will be available for sale from the Gallery shop.
Artist Roundtable Discussion21 April 2009, 6-8pm
The Burton Gallery will also host some of the Evolution Festival this year.Go to: http://lumen.org.uk/?page_id=106

Evolution is an internationally respected visual arts festival that concentrates on screen based art. Some of the worlds best artists have shown in this festival so it’s really important that you look out for screenings. Again in terms of audiences, how does the festival format work? Why would you as an artist engage with this type of event? Lumen the company that host Evolution also operate as a support service for artists and the hire out everything from projectors to audio gear as well as provide excellent technicianing services. Without their support many of the media based projects in Leeds wouldn’t be able to exist. You may want to reflect on how artists often need to engage with others in order to make their work public and whether or not these collaborations are successful.

Another festival coming up is: Expo Leeds 24-29 September 2009
Like most festivals there are commissions available for artists. This one below is typical and is something you might think about as a way of reaching a particular discrete audience.
Expo LeedsPresented by Sound and Music and MAAP
Call For Submissions and Commission Proposals Now Open
Expo is the hub and playground of the experimental music and sound artscene in the UK and beyond. Free and open, the event mobilises anational network of artists and engages with communities from allbackgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it in directcontact with the public. Expo steps out from traditional venues and intospaces that lie at the heart of the community -inspiring practitionersand the public to reconsider their environments.Expo will land in Leeds in September 09 for a long weekend ofperformance, exhibition and presentation which will take place across avariety of physical and virtual spaces.The weekend aims to highlight the broadest possible range of approachesand thinking that surround the sonic arts. We welcome submissions of allkinds. Alongside international artists, the festival has previouslyshowcased work by young people, disabled adults and those with learningdifficulties, students and hundreds of emerging UK artists. We want allwork of all kinds that has sound as a central element. As well as asking for all kinds of submitted work for its programme ExpoLeeds is offering £4000 of commission money towards the creation of anew installation work that will sit within the Leeds Arena space atLeeds City Museum during the festival weekend. Please visit www.expofestival.org <http://www.expofestival.org> for details on how to submit and updates on the programme. The closingdate for submissions and commission proposals is 29 May2009.

I went to a creative sector ‘Triple Crunch’ meeting last night. The ‘Crunch’ is the combination of peak oil crisis, financial crunch and global warming. The art sector is trying to mobilise in order to respond to the loss of support and funding that will probably be coming in response to the Government’s heavy subsidy of the banking sector.
Representatives from artists’ studios, the performance arts, photography, design activism, sound recoding studios, public art agencies etc. were all there and some interesting resolutions were made. There was a strong concern that people coming into the creative arts industry in the near future would not have a very supportive environment within which to set up practice. Therefore the sector needs to protect its own and in order to do this will set up networks of professionals who will look to evolve supportive structures for existing and incoming practitioners. These networks will consist of ‘skill sharing’ cooperatives, that initially will be concerned to provide a bartering service based on a skills exchange, but will eventually evolve into a multi faceted loose structure that may eventually provide support in terms of housing, workshops, fund raising etc etc for those within the sector. Essentially the sector was asked if individuals within it could be generous enough to give time and skills to others who were perhaps finding the new climate difficult. It was interesting to see people debating the need for rhizomatic structures to be evolved. Deleuze and Guattari’s work was cited several times. I will keep posting information on this, as it sits squarely within the audiences agenda. In particular who is the arts for? If in times of economic downturn the arts are the first area to feel the pinch, does this mean audiences are fickle or that people don’t recognise the importance of the arts?

A couple of other bits and bobs. I have started to research new hanging mechanisms for paper based work. One area that the printing industry is developing is magnetised fixings. For magnetic signage products, used for posters etc see: http://www.anchormagnets.com/page74/Products/MagneticSheetRange
For magnets http://neotexx.com/?gclid=COOEyOH9ypkCFQO5GgodmTjctQ
Or http://www.shawmagnets.com/

One private view tonight with free wine. Wed 31st March
INVITATION TO PRIVATE VIEWN CND From 5.00 - 8.00
Holy Trinity Church,Boar Lane, Leeds
A sound installation of abstract field recordings The result will be a resonating collage of audio that relates yet contrasts to the theological setting.

It is the last studio session on Thursday. There are still people that I havnt made contact with. If you need me to look at what you are doing please post your URL into the comment box and say who you are if it is not obvious. Blogs are of course nothing new see http://latest-art.co.uk/blog/ but by now I am starting to get a handle of how they work. The good thing is that once the community of users starts getting familiar with the technology and at least one person ‘hosts’ the conversation, the potential for a good and proper dialogue increases. Whatever you might think of the level of my input, at least it’s shared. If I mention something to someone in a comments box, it’s available to all of the group. If you are not sure of what to do you can just look at what other people are posting up and check it out. It’s easy to see who is thinking and who is not. It’s not as good as face to face, but we can’t always be there in person. I’m aware that when I come in, I only see certain people, others I never or rarely see. Sometimes I find myself repeating the same thing to each person and this can be a good way of everyone being able to access the information in their own time. I’ve decided I like the informality of Blogs. I can just drop in information about an opening, just be thoughtful about my own contribution to this, try to raise the theoretical levels of thinking or just comment on someone’s posting by sending an artist’s name. The problem with essays is that they have an academic tone that has to be artificially kept all the way through and except for the writer only I get to read them. This is similar with the journal. However the sketchbook/notebook is different. The sketchbook’s drawing dialogue needs to be private. Drawings operate by triggering ideas as they arrive through the doing. It’s a delicate space to work in and perhaps would lose sensitivity if hosted online.

Just a thought. Some of you may be interested in on-line ways of reaching new audiences. E zines are now becoming very popular; this one in particular has some good quality images and is reasonably well respected. http://www.platform58.com/page/ezine-2#archive
The important issue of course is that you analyse the format. How do the social, behavioural and psychological aspects of cyberspace affect the way images are received and used? The Saatchi on-line gallery is probably the most well known repository of this type. See http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/

I had an interesting morning looking at everyone in REN's blogs. They range from just started to quite extensive thoughts and images about the audiences issue.
At some point I will have to mark the evidence, whether it is in the form of a blog or not.
There are always two aspects for me when I come to assess work, one is the apparently simple task of responding to the brief outcomes and the module descriptor.
So what is this easy bit?
The module descriptor indicates that as this is a 10 credit module I should initially be looking for evidence of 70 hours work on the part of each individual student. OK so how? Well, the writing itself evidences time spent thinking and reflecting. Images can reflect time spent going places, fiddling with the technology in order to download etc. What people talk about evidences where they have been, visits to the Yorkshire sculpture park, openings etc. walks around the city looking for suitable sites for art work/audience interventions, visits to London Galleries etc etc. On top of this there is evidence of actual art stuff, tryouts in terms of collages or photographs of pieces of work in situ etc. In some cases the blog itself has been constructed as part of the communication system that surrounds an art work and is integral to it. Lots of stuff there that I can use to evidence time spent.

But what about the aims of the module?

The Audiences module runs parallel with the students’ core practice based ‘materials’ module. The aim of this module is to raise students’ awareness of how considerations of audience can on the one hand effect how they present and site their own work and on the other hand become an important driver as to content and context.

It is important for them to consider how this growing awareness opens out opportunities for extending their own existing practice as well as them becoming more theoretically aware. In particular students will be given an opportunity to exhibit at St James Hospital and they need to reflect on this opportunity not only in how they present but how an audience might receive their work.

So I will need to reflect how this is evidenced too. This brings me to the other issue I bring to bear on these things. As an artist as well as an educator I’m always looking for that insight or involvement that suggests that this business means something to the people involved. I strongly believe in the power of art to engage with the human condition. It has a unique role to play in how we can communicate to others. It doesn’t give answers, it doesn’t provide solutions to problems but what it can do is open a door for insight or reflection in unpredictable and complex ways. It most importantly is not straightforward. It can act directly through the senses, in this case I am a firm believer in a phenomenological approach to thinking about this stuff and use the embodied mind as a starting point for thinking about metaphor. I.e. I am as subjective as the next person and this will affect how I mark the module.

But back to the criteria. I did publish those a couple of weeks ago but as always I’m out of time, but will return to reflect on this topic another day.

One more space that I havnt directed your attention to. Holy Trinity Church on Boar Lane. (This is the road that you turn into as you turn right out of the rail station) The use of churches as sites for art has of course a long history. You may want to consider whether or not the past still resonates into the present when working in these venues.

NCND Radio Art Installation 30th March - 3rd April
Opening Night Monday: 5.00 / 8.00Continues Tuesday - Friday: 12.00 / 4.00
Holy Trinity Church, Boar Lane, Leeds
This sound installation features abstract field recordings which are transmitted throughout the church to suspended radios; receivers will also pick up sounds from several different locations outside the building. The result will be a resonating collage of audio that relates yet contrasts to the theological setting. Influences are taken from a wide range of analog broadcasting sources, particularly Number Stations. These strange encrypted messages have been transmitted between frequencies since World War Two. The coded signals still continue today and have an incredibly unusual auditory and musical quality that have been abstracted and recreated in the installation.
This exhibition will also feature on the 1st April Art Walk for more details got to http://www.pavilion.org.uk/artwalks.html

An interesting event coming up at PSL. Morphic Resonance. See below for the posting. The most interesting issue in relation to audiences is that the space will be used an an extended studio. The fact that the audience is therefore invited into the site of production, asks questions about the relationship between the concept of the gallery and the studio.
The post as copied from LVAF.
25th March to 17th June 2009.Wed-Sat, 12-5pm or by appointment.
Private view 12th May 6-8pm.
Morphic Resonance* is an experimental project for PSL by artists andartist collectives nominated by artist-led spaces from across theNorth of England.
For the first 6 weeks the artists will be working at PSL using it as an extended studio space, moving towards an exhibition from 13th may. The project examines the urge among artiststo control the dissemination and production of art.
PSL is open to the public throughout.
Featuring: Rachel Lancaster, Ant Macari, No Fixed Abode, Nous Vous,David Steans and Hardeep Pandhal, Rebecca Chesney, Robina Llewellynand Elaine Speight (Pest Publications), Richard Rigg, Silver Mawson, Daniel Simpkins and Penny Whitehead (The Royal Standard).
*The term `Morphic Resonance,' coined by biologist Rupert Sheldrake,describes `the basis of memory in nature…the idea of mysterioustelepathy-like interconnections between organisms and of collectivememories within a species.'
In collaboration with theartmarket. Supported by: Arts CouncilEngland, Leeds City Council, Castlefield Gallery, Static, WorkplaceGallery and The Royal Standard
PSL [Project Space Leeds]Whitehall Waterfront2 Riverside WayLeeds LS1 4EHUK www.projectspaceleeds.org.ukinfo@projectspaceleeds.org.uk
+44 (0)7930 236383

For a very different audience engagement experience tomorrow night (Friday) try this.

A bespoke mobile guerrilla projection unit will be taking a projection trundle through Leeds on Friday night! The mobile projections and mobile cart handiness are provided by the talented and experimental Dave Lynch sharing some of his quirky visions with us! Stating at the Packhorse at 8.30pm LS6 before meandering down Woodhouse Lane, (projecting as we go!) towards the O2 Academy, Millennium square and Leeds City Art Gallery where we will stop for approx 10mins in each site to project shorts from the best of Outdoor AV's show reel for your viewing! Click on the map for route/site directions:http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102559007930663046930.000465582932b5565a204&z=15
This event is brought to you by Outdoor AV and DarkDay 09

For those of you interested in curatorial practice, this could be a useful thing to go to.
Henry Moore Institute,Wednesday 18th March, 6pm. Artist talk - Jens Hoffman (California College of the Arts) - 'Fire'Free of Charge - not necessary to book
Jens Hoffmann (*1974, San Jose, Costa Rica) is a writer and curator of exhibitions. He has worked as a curator since 1997 and is currently the Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. From 2003 to 2007 he was the Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He has curated over 30 exhibitions internationally since the late 1990s. Currently he is a lecturer at the Curatorial Practice Program of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, a guest professor at the Nova Academia de Bella Arti in Milan and an adjunct faculty member of the Curatorial Studies Program of Goldsmiths College, University of London. He works as adjunct curator at the CAAM - Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for which he is curating the exhibition 'Cristobal Colon' (2010) and a guest curator at ArtPace in the San Antonio, Texas. He is co-curator of the 2nd San Juan Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico opening in April 2009. 'Keep The Fire Burning' will be about artists as provocateurs and the history of anti-autoritarian art - starting with a painting by Ruscha in which LACMA is on fire.

N.B. Tom Cookson is showing in the Interim exhibition down the road in the old Vernon Street college building. Opening tomorrow (Wed) at 6.00pm. A good networking opportunity as students from other colleges will be showing too. PS no one has mentioned any of the shows around college, what do you think of the college as a site for exhibitions?

Some stuff for Thursday
Louisa will be taking a walking tour of possible sites for your artwork. Meet at 1pm in the studio. In order to find out places people are looking at I will put up a map of the centre of Leeds so that people can indicate on it where they are thinking of possibilities for either publicly sited or gallery based interventions. There are still blogs I cant find, so I'm also posting up a list of those I have found with gaps. Can you fill in the gaps for me please?

For interesting resource on sonic art visit http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=84

Last week I mentioned a couple of links to how you could theoretically position some of your writings on audiences. However both the positions I wrote about (reception theory and the ‘death of the author’) were taken from the point of view of the audience as interpreter. As artists we are usually much more interested in theoretical approaches that empower us to communicate our ideas. One of the most successful is the use of rhetoric.
Rhetoric as a discipline has been used for thousands of years and used to be a large formal part of everyone’s education. However this is no longer the case.
I started to get interested in it as a way of helping me make better decisions about the images I was making during the 1980s. On recommendation I read Francis Yates’ book ‘the Art of Memory’ a wonderful text that makes you aware of how important memory was to society before universal literacy. Memory training was part of rhetorical training and as soon as I started to get more into what this consisted of, I realised that I had unearthed a fantastic system that could be used to make decisions as to not only how something was working, but how to push ideas forward.
For instance one of the rhetorical ‘tropes’ is metaphor. Artists use metaphor all the time, but examining it under the umbrella of rhetoric you come to a deeper understanding of how it works as a persuasive tool. Rhetoric is one of the three arts of discourse; the others are logic and dialectic. Logic was something I was introduced to when I did my Dip AD and was introduced to British analytical philosophy and Wittgenstein. A dialectic approach was something I was already using as I thought of conceptual art very much as an argument or dialogue with my audience. But I hadn’t understood that rhetoric was probably the most powerful of all three. Rhetoric was aimed at teaching senators to persuade audiences of the veracity of their argument and it was very precise in the way it worked. However first of all if you want to use it you need to think through how to translate the training as it is for the use of the spoken word and not for the making of art objects. For instance ‘Alliteration’ is a rhetorical trope. It explains how the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of several words in sequence helps a speaker to engage an audience’s attention in the way the words are connected, not just by meaning but by a deeper ‘sound’ value. You can use this in the way you build things. Repeating variations of a form throughout an installation or sculpture can convince the viewer that there is a common visual idea that flows throughout the formal values that you have set up. However ‘Anacoluthon’; which means a lack of grammatical sequence or a change in the grammatical construction within the same sentence can be used in visual constructions when you want to draw attention to a change in concept. You can suddenly change materials or colour to create a moment of attention to a particular aspect of what you have built.
Another trope is ‘Anadiplosis’ which means ‘doubling back’, it is the rhetorical repetition of one or several words; more specifically, repetition of a word that ends one clause at the beginning of the next. The visual equivalent of this is making sure each object within an installation has something about it that reflects a visual quality that is found in its neighbour. This can help the read as an audience strives to understand how to piece together your thinking.
‘Anastrophe’: the transposition of normal word order can be used to create unexpected juxtapositions and therefore engage your audience’s attention. An obvious visual version of this is to put unexpected formal sequences together. I could go on, but I would hope that by now you have the idea. Just look up ‘rhetoric tropes’ on the internet and find out what they mean, you could then try and apply some to what you are trying to do. It worked for Warhol, ‘repetition’ is a rhetoric trope.

Linking through to alternative audiences can be very useful. Seven Arts in Chapel Allerton hosts Café Scientifique. I try and attend whenever I have time because the concept behind the Café is that scientists at the peak of their profession are given the opportunity to discuss and explain their ideas to the general public. There have been some terrific debates and if you want to keep up with what is going on in other professions this is a great way of doing this. As an artist I believe its part of our 'job' to do this, if we become ignorant of the complexity of the world we could be accused of a certain thinness in our practice. The next café Scientifique is on Wednesday March 18th; the subject is ‘Antimatter’ and the speaker is Frank Close, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University. Starts at 8pm at Seven Arts, Chapel Allerton, doors open at 7.30. Catch number 2 or 3A bus from the centre of town, bus stop opposite the Grand theatre, get off at the old Chapel Allerton Police Station.

Just one new gallery opening to draw your attention to.

Brahm Gallery presents 'Taxonomy', Photoconstructs by Samuel Fisher

Brahm Gallery invites you to the private viewing Thursday 19th March 2009 6-8pm

Public Viewing dates
Friday 20th March 2009 – Tuesday 21st April 2009

Brahm Gallery is proud to present ‘Taxonomy’, new work by Samuel Fisher. Architectural artifacts as principal manifestations of the politico-economic conditions we live within are Samuel’s primary source of exploration. Inspired by the sacred geometries of Islamic art, his work addresses both the beauty of the infinite and simultaneously our almost dystrophic urban reality.

Exclusive to the opening night, work purchased or reserved will be subject to a 15% discount off the marked price. Brahm Gallery is a commission free gallery and all sales revenue goes directly to the artist.

Brahm Gallery is open to the public on weekdays (except bank holidays) from 10am to 5pm Brahm Gallery The Brahm Building Alma Road Leeds LS6 2AH www.brahm.com/gallery gallery@brahm.com

Free Entry

This should be really interesting. Henry Moore Institute,Wednesday 11th March, 6pm. Artist talk by Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment - 'Air' It's also free of Charge.
Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the performance group Forced Entertainment and in collaboration with visual artists, choreographers, and photographers. His work ranges from performance to video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. Etchells' published work includes Certain Fragments (Routledge, 1999) and The Dream Dictionary (for the Modern Dreamer). Addressing the element of Air, Etchells, who has collaborated with artist Asta Groting on one chapter of her ventriloquism project 'The Inner Voice', will speak about language, voice and silence, and about presence and absence in performance, drawing on his own practice and that of others in the zone of contemporary performance and art. This event sits alongside the concurrent Henry Moore exhibition 'Asta Groting: 1987-2008' and the Henry Moore Institute gallleries are open until 9pm on Wednesday evenings. This presentation is free of charge and it is not necessary to book. It is part of a '4 Elements' series of talks in March at the Institute and Tim will be followed by Jens Hoffman (California College of the Arts) on the 18th March and Mark Godfrey (Tate Modern) on 25th March.

I suppose I ought to put a more theoretical stance forward for those of you with a more conceptual interest in audiences.
An initial two strands that could be looked at. One is reception theory and the other is the ‘death of the author’. Reception theory focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience. This means that a "text"—be it a book, movie, or art work—is not simply passively accepted by the audience, but that the viewer interprets the meanings of the art work based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. In essence, the meaning of a text/art work is not inherent within the work itself, but is created within the relationship between the work and the reader. Some key texts:
Holub, Robert C. Crossing Borders: Reception Theory and Poststructuralism
Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception.
On the other hand the phrase ‘the death of the author’ has several interpretations, all of which relate to reception theory. "Death of the Author" is an essay by Roland Barthes that you can find in his collection of writings ‘Image-Music-Text’. Barthes said that you need to liberate texts from their authors, as an ‘understanding’ of the author forced false interpretations on what the text actually said. For instance the classic example is the one John Berger in ‘Ways of Seeing’ uses when illustrating the way we read Van Gogh. Berger proposes that we read the Van Gogh painting of a cornfield through a filter of the following text ‘This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself’.
Derrida however takes the issue further. He asserts, there is an "absence of the sender, the addressor, from the marks that he abandons, which are cut off from him and continue to produce effects beyond his presence and beyond the present actuality of his meaning, that is, beyond his life itself..." Consequently, the act of being an audience, for Derrida, is always already an acknowledgement of a two-fold absence: "the absence of the referent and the absence of the signifying intention."

Derrida would further argue that deep reading or close observation by the viewer can perform the "reverse of what its author intended"; Derrida presents a counter-logic which opposes any authority of the author, he states "the names of authors have here no substantial value." He may have been aware of what Duchamp described as, ‘the stink of artist’s egos’ and in a time of celebrity culture it is a refreshing reminder of how our delusion of control over our lives is in fact just that. The Jade Goody case being a very clear example of how ‘readers’ can take over the ‘reading’ of someone’s entire life. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology or Signature Event Context. Fredric Jameson’s The Prison House of Language is a good introduction to Deridda and the ‘I’ problem. Going back to art, Robert Morris’s the ‘I’ Box could be read as a reflection on the complex nature of authorship. Perhaps in a far more profound manner than either Barthes or Derrida. However all of these issues touch upon a key point in relation to the ‘Audience’ module. As a maker/producer you have no way of fully controlling audience reaction to your work and one of the ‘rites of passage’ that an artist has to go through is an acceptance of this.

A couple of resources

http://www.ubu.com/
http://www.greylodge.org/

Ubu in particular is a great resource for rare artists’ videos or sound pieces. You may want to reflect on the audience for this database. Who would use it, why and because of its existence, do you think artists could use it as a distribution network?

The Artists’ Book Fair over the weekend was very busy. If art audience interests are measured by attendance the book fair must be well up on the graph. The fact that you can buy art in a very accessible package, which is also available at reasonable prices is a clear attraction.
The fact that so many artists’ works can be seen in one venue at the same time is also very attractive. There is a chance you will find at least one thing of interest. Having the artists there in person is also a bonus, not just for the audience but for exhibitors too, as I’m sure one of the reasons for exhibiting is that there are wonderful networking opportunities. There are a lot of opportunities for those of you interested in book art. For instance the latest call is for the European International Book Art Biennale. See http://www.eibab.blogspot.com/ for details.
I think of the book format as an opportunity to develop a miniature, pocket sized art gallery. There are some of my books in the college’s collection down in Vernon Street, (see images above of a couple of sample pages) the college collection has books from several well known artists as well as past students. Well worth a browse.

The images above are the work of George Musgrave and C F Tunnicliffe

Just a reminder
12th International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair
Friday 6 and Saturday 7 March 2009
11.00am–6.00pm
The Parkinson Court, University of Leeds

I went to the Marianne Springham opening last night, it was good to see a few students find the Design and Innovation Centre gallery space. This much more commercially focused gallery is at the centre of studio, office and workshop spaces for designers and design related businesses. It therefore has an existing audience of people who work in the building and a shop style frontage which allows an artist to engage with a passing public. Because of these factors the space suits certain types of work and there is an opportunity for artists to sell. Obviously if the rest of the building is devoted to design businesses, there will be people passing through who have had some sort of art training, so they are more likely to take an interest in art work, especially if you can place it in a domestic or office setting.
The work on show raised several questions. Comments overheard on the evening; “I’m not sure but the work’s too nice”, “It’s not serious enough”, It’s too jokey”, “Its too easy to like” as well as “It’s uplifting”, “Really good to see work that’s light-hearted and funny” , “You could live with this stuff” , “It’s great to see work that’s so unpretentious” There was a fascinating divide here. I felt some people were slightly ashamed that they liked the work. It wasn’t “difficult” it didn’t “engage” with contemporary theory. I was reminded of Bourdieu’s theories on Taste. His classic book is ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste’, in which he describes how taste can be seen as a socially constructed quality that is used to maintain or gain a position in society. Sometimes it’s hard to separate your own thoughts and ideas about something from the pressures of the group mentality. (The Fine Art community can be very snobbish). Did I like the work? Yes, some of it. In particular those images that reminded me of ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why…’ that nursery rhyme is somehow very disorientating, the concept is more frightening than most horror films, as the old lady swallows larger and larger things, the images become more and more grotesque and the ‘horror vacui’ that lies hidden beneath those apparently simple verses, tugs at my nerve endings. What appears simple may not be. I think we are deceived by certain platitudes that childhood is ‘nice’ and that children are ‘simple’. The work did press some interesting buttons.
There are two artists that I spent hours looking at during the 1950s. George Musgrave and C F Tunnicliffe. George Musgrave sculpted the cowboy and indian models that I played with and C F Tunnicliffe painted the pictures that the wildlife cards that came in the tea were based on. If I think back no other artists have had such powerful presences in my life, both of course would not be regarded as models for contemporary practice. However in terms of working with a targeted audience they are excellent examples to look at. The targeted audience is of course myself, a 5 to 6 year old boy living in Dudley in the Black Country. Both these artists worked with commercial organisations to distribute their work, both artists’ work was reduced in scale and received by myself as something for me as a child, these products were not for the adult world.
However looking back, Musgrave’s figures are wonderful compacted summaries of the body positions of the heroes and villains that the Western films of the time engrained in our heads. Are his tiny figures, sculpturally as interesting as Michelangelo’s David? Well yes to a 6 year old I believe they were and over 50 years later, part of me believes they still are. George’s work is still around, I find it in junk shops occasionally, if anyone sees any of his sculptures in unlikely places, let me know. (Oh, George also invented the yellow parking lines, so his work still penetrates our lives in very significant ways) Tunnicliffe on the other hand is now having a revival and he is seen as part of the English romantic tradition, in particular his wood engravings of animals and farm scenes, are regarded as being part of a tradition that goes back to Thomas Berwick.

Just a reminder of the brief outcomes.

For 20 marks. Apply and research primary and secondary sources
For 40 marks. Explore the contextual and professional location of their creative practice and its relationship to publics and audiences
For 40 marks. Realise a synthesis between concept and creative practice

Studio practice evidenced through performance or portfolio of images. The blog should therefore consist of images as well as text. The images should evidence both contextual and professional location of practice, (i.e. all the stuff collected and responded to when thinking about exbition site and context) as well as showing some actual work or proposed work that evidences a synthesis between concept and creative practice. (This could be a series of collages that demonstrates how your work would look if shown on the High Street)
Project report 500 words, is the actual text of your blog. 500 words would be a minimum, I would expect if you keep it up to be rather more than that.

Remember it was suggested that you all produce some images based on a site and a consideration how it could be used for this week's meeting.

Another type of exhibition space to look at:

Marianne Springham exhibition Opening at Leeds Design Innovation Centre, the Calls, Thursday 6.00 to 8.00.

Another gallery space to investigate
WHITE: Four Artists Whose Work Has Absolutely Nothing In Common Except For The Lack Of Colour
Opening night party - TUESDAY 10th March 6-9pm
Open - 1-5pm Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 11th-13th
Hope House Gallery, 65 Mabgate, Leeds, LS9 7DR
I havnt had time to investigate this space, but again it could be useful as a comparison to others.

It might also be worth investigating RED ERIC STUDIOS which has large white studio space available in Leeds city centre. White warehouse space 90 sq metres, 4m high ceiling,central heating, kitchen and bathroom facilities,large windows,so with lots ofnatural light and car parking spaces.Available to hire by the hour or by the half/full day. Weekdays and weekends, daytime and evening sessions.If you would like to go and have a look or to book a space, contact: CharlieRED ERIC STUDIOS47 WESTFIELD ROADLS3 1DG0113 242562907926646065

Pavilion seem to be organising art walks. This is on tomorrow, 4th March. Meeting points as follows, one space I haven’t mentioned before is St Johns church; it might be interesting to go just to look at the space there.
17:30 Leeds Met Gallery: Perhaps Nothing, Perhaps Something18:00 Leeds Art Gallery: Rank. Picturing the social order1615-200918:20 Henry Moore Institute Asta Gröting Sculpture: 1987-2008.19:10 Something Visual, St. John's Church.Meet at Leeds Met Gallery at 17:30. For more information contact GillHoward: 0113 242 5100 or gill@pavilion.org.uk

An interesting weekend in terms of art work to see. PSL offered an opportunity to assess how that gallery’s open tall white wall and breezeblock feel supported/effected the artwork and the audience’s experience of it and to compare this with the OLSEN experience.
My read on this could be linked to earlier comments on the frame. The informal nature of the work within PSL I feel reflects a need to integrate the work into the ‘real’ world. Rory’s radios leak the sound from radio stations normally heard in domestic and work settings into the gallery, a fax machine links us to another place, could this be an office somewhere? A smoke machine creates a fog within which we have to look at everything else, are we supposed to be reminded of a club scene? Most of the work played with the everyday world, how are we meant to read a horse when its in an art gallery. Are we supposed to switch our reading between ‘real’ and ‘constructed’ worlds? As an audience are we then to take this experience and load it onto what is happening as we walk out of the gallery into the world. The edges of one thing fraying and being rewoven into the other, collaboration perhaps being opened out to us as observers now participants in the process. However there were still several signifiers operating in the PSL space that guaranteed that it would be ‘read’ as a professional art gallery space. The fact the walls were raised to 12 feet and painted white, the convention of the ‘opening’ or in this case the ‘closing’, how the work was presented as a discrete series of pieces etc. In fact I think this space is closest to the warehouse spaces you often find art shown in when visiting larger cities. It feels ‘international’ and doesn’t have that parochial problem of having to overcome the municipality feel of locally designated ‘official’ spaces for art.

OLSEN was the opposite. Framed worlds seen in the mythologised dark of a cinema space. This reminded me far more of the way pre-historic art in caves is described in The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
by David Lewis-Williams. Lewis-Williams describes the membrane between the real world and the world of the ‘other’ as being essential for shamanistic practices. A spirit world, a place where only the mind can go, linked to the unconscious but needing a place to become, was seen as vital to early human’s wellbeing. He refers to the cave wall as the membrane which allows passage between these two worlds. For me the projection on the cinema wall and my immersion in the dark operated the same way. Some of the work seemed designed to work with that trance like state you can find yourself in when gazing at flickering lights in the dark. Perhaps as an audience I need that framework in order to suspend my disbelief. Artists I was particularly taken with were: James Holcombe, Victor Alimpiev, Emily Wardill, Makino Takashi, Pete McPartlan and Pat O’Neill. For those of you into Beuys there was a very funny film by Ken McMullen.



By the way smoke and fog machines are things to look at in themselves, there are so many varieties, do you think Dave Ronalds chose the best one? See:
http://www.kave.co.uk/Kave_New/hire/effects.htm

An interesting opening at the Met last night, good to see a lot of people out looking at how well it had been curated.
Still getting into the technology here. Several people have linked to this blog as me. So I have about 7 followers who are GB. I think this must happen if you have my blog open and then attempt to join. If in doubt perhaps another method would be to e mail me at garry.barker@leeds-art.ac.uk with your blog's URL. I will then have a look at it and attempt to post a comment. If you have managed to link to mine already, I've posted a comment, that is if you have made an entry that I can comment on. One person had made a link but as there were no blog entries, so I couldn’t comment on anything.
This is all fascinating stuff as the whole issue of technology and how non transparent it is can become part of the audience issue. This is all part of the digital divide debate. Some argue by working with new technology it democratises the whole process, others that it just creates further barriers.

Two more exhibition spaces to investigate. Take photographs of how work is displayed, you can then comment and analyse how audiences are meant to think about the work and how context affects meaning. (You might have to ask if this is OK, make sure you explain why you are taking the photographs)

The first is the Pavilion. 7 Saw Mill Yard, Round Foundry, Leeds, LS11 7WH, that’s next to the Cross Keys Pub, head down the side of the rail station, go under the Neville Street bridge and turn right at the huge Bridgewater Place building.
Opening is Kevin Newark’s Protoplasm, 26 Feb - 30 April, 2009“Protoplasm presents a series of discarded plastic carrier bags found inthe canals of East London. In photographing these objects Newark lookedto find solace for the exiled soul of the plastic bag” Part of your interrogation could be to comment on artist or gallery press release texts. The opening event will take place 26 February 2009, 6 - 8pm at thePavilion Gallery. To attend RSVP Gill Howard E> gill@pavilion.org.uk orT> 0113 242 5100. Also on the same evening. Tonight!!! You are invited to the preview of ‘Perhaps Nothing, Perhaps Something’, Thursday 26 February, 6-8pmArtists include: Samantha Donnelly, Cornelia Parker, Paul Rooney, Rachel Whiteread, Katy Woods and Chris Wright.‘Perhaps Nothing, Perhaps Something’ offers viewers a glimpse of theinvisible. Sculpture, sound and video installations examine and make theintangible tangible, celebrate the latency of objects, and drawattention to the in-between. These moments of apparent nothingness,spaces and rests are not without value and provide a crucial balance tothe actual’

The Leeds Met Gallery is just down the hill from college, so you could drop in on the way to the Pavilion. If you are going to write about two exhibitions opening on the same night, you might want to comment on whether or not it’s a good thing to cluster openings together. Does it encourage a larger audience to attend both, or just fragment potential audiences so that both venues suffer from low attendance?

The Alistair Robinson curated show ‘Rank’ at the Leeds city art gallery is open until 26th April. As an example of curation it’s fascinating. The exhibition is a clear attempt to reconcile the gallery exhibition format with an educational remit. Responses have been quite oppositional. I have had several artists complain to me that it is too didactic, too concerned with telling a story of inequality and not letting the works ‘speak for themselves’. The other complaint was that they felt that too many ‘non art’ works were included and that there was no attempt to differentiate between commissioned illustrations of government statistics and artists’ works. I feel the opposite; I really enjoyed the conjunction between so called ‘art’ and ‘non art’. In fact I felt that some of the commissioned illustrations were really powerful and at times overshadowed the ‘art’.
It terms of thinking about audience there could be an interesting debate centered on these issues. Do you think a curator should be telling a story in this way? Does it reduce the art work to a cipher within the curator’s didactic thread? Or is all artwork open to interpretation? Does the artist lose control over the work as soon as it goes into the public domain? Is it OK to target the audience in this ‘educational’ manner? As a publicly funded art gallery should it have an educational remit? Is the gallery operating to comment on the art within its walls or is it offering comments on the wider context – history, street, city, money, business – that contains it? (See Brian O’Doherty, the White Cube). Or is this an example of state control? As Foucault points out, the museum as a place in which cultural values are authorized and specific behaviours encouraged as a means to produce socially acquired knowledge. If you went to the 2nd year lecture on ‘Museums and Exhibitions’ this specific point was articulated, you may want to refer to your notes taken on the day.

Stuff on this weekend

OLSEN

Sunday 1 March 2009
Hyde Park Picture House, Brudenell Road, Leeds, LS6 Tea & homemade cake (vegan too) from 1.45pm, films start 2pm
£5/4

Olsen is at the Hyde Park Picture House again this Sunday supplying experimental film and video with tea and homemade cake.

This time around Pete McPartlan will be doing a live video and sound performance with his ELOMD system and we'll also be showing new films by Makino Takeshi (with a soundtrack by Jim O'Rourke / Chris Corsano), Stephen Sutcliffe, Joe Mawson, Emily Wardill, Victor Alimpiev, James Holcombe, Pat O'Neill and more. Expect Ian McKellen, psychological case studies, frame lines, a toy aeroplane take-off, throbbing light, seriously out of date film stock and, maybe, Joseph Beuys.

For the almost but not quite complete programme see: http://www.olsenorsen.org/

It's also a PSL closing on Saturday afternoon.

Closing party Saturday 28 February, 2-5pm A collaborative project between PSL (Leeds) and the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London) featuring Nick Cass and Lizzie Hughes / Dave Ronalds and Matt & Ross / Noah Sherwood and Janis Rafailidou / Amy Stephens and Rory Macbeth

Both the above events could be analysed in terms of audience. PSL Project Space Leeds (see map above) is set in the groundfloor of a new development complex. What type of audience is it catering for? Does it encourage a certain type of work? OLSEN is curated by Will Rose, he is very interested in bringing 'expanded cinema' as an art form to select Leeds audiences. He developed the idea when he was in New York, there are similar venues there which cater for very select audiences that have developed a taste for a certain type of work. Probably the most interesting issue here though is a curator taking over an existing semi-commercial film venue and tapping into an existing audience base.

Those of you interested in developing a gallery space in order to develop new audience opportunities, could look at Washington Garcia and other peripatetic gallery spaces. Find Washington Garcia at spaceshttp://www.washingtongarciagallery.com/aboutus.html The interesting issue here is that often these spaces are started by groups of artists and that they can develop into career opportunities. Washington Garcia has been running for about three years in Glasgow. Initially they were going into empty buildings, painting them white and making the spaces as gallery like as possible. Then gradually as they built a reputation, developed a website and now they receive money from Glasgow International http://www.glasgowinternational.org/ to help support the shows they put on, as the city now recognises the importance of the shows they curate. The fact that they have targeted mid career artists to show has meant that they could very quickly establish a strong profile and other galleries have wanted to look at who they are showing. Sometimes it’s not about developing a space just to show your own work, but once you have established a toehold in the art community its much easier to then start accessing venues for your own work.
Matt Roberts of Matt Roberts Arts http://www.mattroberts.org.uk/ gave a talk to the third years yesterday about what you need to do in order to engage with the world of post college employment. He was emphasising how important it was to volunteer, set up shows in alternative venues, write about and curate shows, basically the more you put into networking and having a broad range of experiences the better. If he comes in again, make sure you make the most of him and dont be afraid to promote yourselves.

There has been a recent shift in theoretical approaches to thinking about audiences due to the introduction to performance theory into the art theory canon. A typical text is Performance Theory By Richard Schechner. If using these theories you can think about the role of the artist as being a type of performance, therefore the audience is seen much more within the context of a theatrical performance. For instance within the conventions of theatre we 'suspend disbelief' i.e. we read the events as they unfold outside of 'reality'. You could therefore suggest that a similar situation occurs when an artists stages an exhibition. The artist plays out a role, that of the artist, and with that comes all of the conventions that that role brings with it, (think of how the artist is categorised/played in films such as 'Lust for Life' or Hancock's 'the Rebel'.) The audience then brings with it an expectation of how the artist should operate. Maurizio Cattelan's work can easily be read within this context.
The opening of an exhibition itself can therefore be seen as part of the ritual of engagement and the audience as participants. This can be opened out to the whole art world, where curators, gallerists, dealers etc all play defined roles. See http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/ for an interesting art world blog.

Catchword: gallerist
Part of speech: n.
Quotation: A fashionable new word is bubbling up in the New York art scene: gallerist, as a substitute for art dealer. Not, of course, just any art dealer. A gallerist is directly involved with the care and feeding of artists, rather than with the quick turnover of art objects.…Some suggest it derives from the French galeriste, long used by top gallery personages in France to distinguish themselves from the mere marchand de tableaux, or picture merchant. Others say it came from Germany, where galerist or galeristin denotes, respectively, a male or female gallery owner.

It might be useful to look at Axis as well as be aware of the ongoing debate on public art
http://www.axisweb.org/dlForum.aspx?ESSAYID=18014

Those of you thinking about accessing new audiences by putting work into public spaces could contextualise the process by referring to a Guardian article on the recession.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/18/slack-space-vacant-shops

Public art online has some very useful information. Sample the link below for a downloadable research document on Millennium Square, Leeds.
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/resources/research/mill_square_leeds.php

Some web-sites that could be useful if you were thinking about researching the way presentation could shape an audience's reaction to art work.

Good iron mongers offer a wide range of fixings and fittings
http://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk/

http://www.choiceful.com/shop-online-Fixings.html

http://www1.westfalia.net/shops/tools/ironmongery/tensioning_rope/tensioning_ropes/

Look at builders supplies as well
http://www.screwfix.com/

http://www.ebuildingsupplies.co.uk/page/home

Delicate and unusual wire meshes etc
http://www.wires.co.uk/?gclid=CKPDgLKJ5pgCFQyjQwodlXAxbQ

More architectural scale wire
http://www.steelwirerope.com/General%20Wire%20Rope/StainlessSteelWireRope.html?gclid=CKDE48KJ5pgCFQo1QwodZmKKcA

For coloured ropes and climbing fixtures
http://www.inglesport.com/shop/catalog.php?category=SRT%20Ropes

Swivels and links etc
http://www.seafishingsupplies.co.uk/index.php?cPath=59_109

If you are thinking about using commercial style signage or text
http://www.fastsigns.co.uk/England-WestYorkshire-Leeds-store857.html

Building walls? Plywood, chipboard, blockboard or MDF
http://www.boardcraft.co.uk/products.asp

Lighting
http://www.pegasusassociates.com/products/ArtGalleryLighting/ArtGalleryLighting.html

Display cabinets
http://www.displaysense.co.uk/display-cabinets?gclid=CML7mN2V5pgCFQpNQwodRQ8ecg

Came across a couple of web links that could be useful.

Constructing audiences, defining art. Public Art and social research
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/buchholzwuggenig/en/print

Quantifying the audience for ones and zeros
demographic description for the audiences for digital art
http://www.davidberman.com/CHINDigitalArtAudiencesLiteratureReviewandMethodologyBerman20050418.pdf

I found 3 images of Carey Young's texts which are interesting in that they highlight the different types of dialogue that artists can have with audiences. An earlier engagement with this type of practice can be seen in the Keith Arnatt show currently on display in the Institute. Keith was a tutor of mine back in the late 60s and early 70s and gave me my first encounter with conceptual thinking. Keith really opened out the possibilities of outside the gallery engagement. Seminars in the sculpture department at that time were very intense; you had to read constantly to keep up.
One all afternoon seminar debated whether or not 1+1=2 was an a priori or an a posteriori statement and if the former, could it have sculptural properties? Keith's 'Trouser-Word Piece' is in the Leeds show. Seeing that photograph of him exhibited wearing his 'I'm a real artist' sandwich board is so nostalgic and also on a personal note very sad, he died just two months ago.

Yesterday's Guardian (G2) had an Adrian Searle review of the new show at the Hayward Gallery, 'The Russian Linesman'. It's curated by the artist Mark Wallinger. Wallinger is a very interesting artist to follow if you are thinking about curatorship or audiences. His huge White Horse has just been chosen as the 'Angel of the South' and earlier work such as 'A real work of art' 'State Britain' and 'Ecce Homo' are facinating engagements with audiences. To hear Wallinger speak about his work on YouTube, visit Mark Wallinger Ecce Homo the EYE. To read the article visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/feb/16/mark-wallinger-the-russian-linesman

Thoughts on the white cube of the gallery space.

The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is probably the clearest expression of what Thomas McEvilley calls "the sterilised operating room of the white cube" (Cited in Inside the White Cube, O'Doherty1999) The environment is perfect for those modernist works that reflect a purity and distance from the everyday. Such as Ettore Spalletti's work above. The audience entering a church like space designed to remind them of how deeply significant the work on display is.

However some artists exhibiting there have tried to engage with this. Carey Young's interrogations being the most recent. I will try and post up some examples of what she she did when I have time.

Try 'delicious' as a bookmarking tool. It also supports 'clouds'. 

Those of you looking at curating should look at Curating Subjects, Paul O'Neill (Ed) 

This medium, the Blog is interesting. One aspect of this is like a diary or journal. It suggests that there is an audience of one, myself alone but when I write this, its not in the same format as when I access the  Blog itself. It feels as if someone else has written the text if I log in and read what I have written. The surrounding frame of warm neutral tones with the familiar menus of font, text layout and other options, will disappear. The new layout is more formal and engineered towards reading rather than composing. I of course know the text was written by myself. I'm not quite in my dotage, yet; but somehow because I have had nothing to do with shaping the surrounding architecture of the site, my text has been adjusted. I've noticed something similar when someone else sets an author's work in print. We select certain fonts that we use constantly but editors choose fonts that suit a whole book layout. When authors send in texts for publication, their layouts, use of capitals, choice of font, spacing etc all contribute to the meaning but it's all lost in the editing process. This is perhaps the first stage in the erasure of the author. 

Another aspect of this medium is that it is accessible to millions. So we are all encouraged to write as if at some time others will read what you are thinking as private thoughts. The structure mirrors the classic paradox of the human condition. I am aware of my own existence but how do I know whether others are aware of myself? They may all be simply generated by my own perceptual encoding. A test of this is of course to find out if anybody really is reading this. Louisa has sent my address to 40 other people and suggested that as they build their Blog they link to this one. Comment would therefore be good, as it would suggest that I am not alone. So, for those of you bored with this, see above for images of my last piece of public artwork. It was for a very targeted audience, designed to embarrass a local landlord and raise awareness of how local building stock was being left to fall apart by profiteering speculators. It is meant to be placed outside the actual building that is falling apart and is meant to have a similar sensibility to roadside shrines. Candles are lit in front of it at night.