Rules of the Game - Spectacles
To start the Rules of the Game series of one week exhibitions of work from students and staff of the Fine Art course at Nottingham Trent University Surface presents Spectacles.
April 19th to April 21st 2007
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Spectacles is a collaborative installation, comprised of pieces by three undergraduates, Matthew S. Cooper, Hannah C. Phillips and Samuel Mercer which consumes the whole of the gallery space. In their interconnected, interactive artworks, they invite the audience on an alternative route around a traditional gallery setting and ask us to question the social aspects which direct our understanding of, and movement through, the gallery environment.
Opening with a special event on Thursday 19th April, 6 - 9pm, Matthew S. Cooper will be in the gallery, tool-kit in hand, connecting pieces of wood with hinges. As each section is completed, it shall be placed on the gallery floor in order to form a trail. It is this trail, the material manifestation of the artistic process, which shall suggest a route for the viewer to follow around the gallery. The trail is to be completed on the opening night, thus the entire installation, when viewed in subsequent days, is to be perceived as the aftermath, the remnants of a passing event.
Cooper’s piece, both literally and figuratively, is inextricably intertwined with that of Hannah C. Phillips’ work which consists of a series of four permanent, yet crude walls. Structurally ambiguous, the walls fragment the gallery space and serve to control the movement of the audience. Control is furthered by Cooper’s wooden formation, his pseudo-path, which shall meander around these walls as it is built. Phillips’ walls shall also be ridden with alternative, yet impossible routes, such as ladders or bridges, constructed by functionally inappropriate materials. Phillips, by alerting the viewer to alternative navigations of the gallery space, encourages a consideration of the formation of our understandings of the gallery environment.
The contestation of space is similarly reflected in Samuel Mercer’s piece. Through the application a pair of elaborate goggles, the viewer is asked to view large paintings which cover three of the gallery’s walls. By the use of red tinted lenses, the viewer is able to encounter something horrendous which lies within these paintings, something which is only visible and tangible when wearing the goggles. The viewer thus pursues something which does not actually exist. The result is a representation of the way in which knowledge, or belief systems, are created and are powerful in the control of movement and perception. Mercer makes pawns of the viewer, embedding them into the art piece itself.
Spectacles is an exciting exploration of the gallery environment. Playful and interactive, this performative installation is an engaging subversion of the particular Rules of the Game, which make up the spaces of the gallery.
Essays
Spectacles
Bound to the ephemeral, in an ever-changing state of flux and mobility, ceaselessly experiential yet denying any directly effectual, participatory action. What we perceive is irrefutably exciting yet remains nothing more than something that we see, nothing above an experienced phenomenon, nothing beyond a spectacle.