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.

Thinking about audiences and how 2D work can be presented. It seems to me there are a couple of central issues. The first is whether or not you want to separate the work from the rest of the world or present it as being contiguous with it. The thorny problem of the frame then arises. The frame by its very nature separates the work off from everything else, but perhaps for a variety of purposes. Historical frames tend to be highly decorative and can be almost as elaborate as the work they enclose. Here issues of ownership, wealth, power, prestige etc come to the fore or in the case of early religious images an attempt to give honorific value by virtue of gilding, exquisite inlay, and offering up craft skills to God etc. In this case of course the image is separated from the world so that it can be meditated upon. This duality of ownership and possession versus providing a frame for meditation seems to have permeated the use of frames all the way through to Modernism. If you look at the way German Expressionist paintings of the early 20th century are framed, they are usually framed in simple thick black stained wood. This heightens the intensity of the colour and the weight yet simplicity of the frame echoes an aesthetic of simple 'peasant' furniture. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Gallery in Madrid has a wonderful room of Nolde, Kirchner and others of the 'Blue Rider' group. The frame here is part of the 'meditation' on meaning, an extension of the expression of the painting. Modernism's fascination with purity of course also drives forward a change in the nature of the frame and it becomes plainer, stripped back and abstract. However the ownership issue doesn’t go away. Most of the paintings of this period could only be bought by the rich. Therefore some were reframed on purchase, or by dealers wanting to ensure that the buyers were getting what they wanted, which wasn’t just something to meditate upon, but was also a possession. This desire drove framers to invent a whole range of blended framing such as simple frames which were gold leafed to look old and of course expensive. The other issue which would take a long time to unpick is the difference between the domestic and gallery settings.
Later in the century the drive to get away from framing was partly a reaction to the 'ownership' issue and partly to present work as if it had a 'reality' that was in a direct engagement with the physical world. Paper being paper, physical stuff with edges and texture etc which would disappear behind glass. As sculpture came away from the plinth, 2D work started to escape the frame. The problem is however how to do this. This is where the world of fixings and fittings comes in and their languages of course are again deeply fascinating.

I was doing some work with Sue a couple of years ago where the local audience for a text piece was going to be tested out. We did a whole series of quick collages. Like the one above. I never know in these situations if anyone recognises these things as art, or whether they need to. Perhaps they are just interventions into the fabric.

The best site specific art installation in town at the moment is 'Chorus' by United Visual Artists. A very neat piece that recognises that its main audience will be opera lovers and it responds beautifully to the architecture. A must see. Go to the Grand theatre and ask the men in black who hang around the dorrway. One of them will take you to it. Great music by Mira Calix to go with it.

The central issue would seem to be one of communication. In communication theory Lasswell's maxim states: “Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect" The interesting issue here is that we are dealing with physical objects and not words, so how do objects communicate?

An other issue is context. Where are these communications taking place? The image above is on a wall in Chapeltown Leeds, or was, it has been removed by the council. It's first audience was I presume the people of the area. I live in Chapeltown and I have obviously responded to this by recording it. Am I though the wrong audience? Have I by posting the image created a new audience that now no longer has any contact with the initial communication. This being an ideal illustration of the 'death of the author' we could say this is a type of bicolage, literally I'm tinkering with the concept, playing with what is available.