Target
- encaustic painted target, video camera, VCR, and movement sensor.
1999
The
work was set up to capture head shots of viewers of the work over
a period of a month. the work strongly reflects my desire through
a number of works to cut down the distance between the object
and the viewer and capture an archive of material for further
development. In this situation the usual know what we like gallery
audience would perceive as a recognisable object, the Jasper Johns
style encaustic Target (with four faces) and approach because
of its 'textural qualities' the paint and wax signifying that
it was a indeed a painting from their point of view and consequently
possibly worth a look, the view hole only becoming visible at
close quarters. In another context a metro based gallery plugging
the chic post or post post deconstructive turn, the work might
appear a spray painted pale grayed imitation of the Johns Targets.
The
residues of the work are contained in 12 video cassettes which
I had intended to use as a basis for a follow up to a series of
drawings For the OShea's. The OShea's two Irish stonemasons that
were employed by John Ruskin to restore New College Oxford after
it was severely damaged by acid rain in the 19th C.
The OShea's carved some of the most memorable of the Gargoyles
in Oxford taking as their subjects the people who passed the work
site. No one passed without scrutiny and they took particular
pleasure in annoying the Oxford Dons by carving them in quite
outrageous forms e.g. as parrots and monkeys.
Back
to Target, one viewing of the videos left me undecided what to
do with them as some of the captured targets showed quite a penchant
for exhibitionism, marvelous what a few free wines have on opening
night late night stalwarts. Normally such nice people too! So
I suggest there may be some issues in the showing of the works.
and after all it has only been seven years so plenty of time yet.
In
1991 and 1996 I had a similar problems of presentation but for
very different reasons, and it has a great deal to do with respect
for a subjects privacy. In 1996 while studying for my masters
I became friendly with the artist in residence, we had been both
working on some text based work mine manifested in a work called
Am I having an aesthetic experience yet? She had been working
as part of broad body of work on some private material, hand writing
it on paper the pinning it up back the front on the studio wall.
she eventually abandoned the work at some point and just left
it forgotten on the wall.
When
the residency ended a number of us were invited to take a piece
of the work she had developed during the residency. most people
took a work that was associated with her known production. I hesitated
and indicated I would like those works on paper on the wall. At
first she was quite taken aback but then said ''yes, on one condition
you must never read them or show them''. they were rolled up and
presented to me in a tube, I have never read them.
In
1991 I constructed a video booth not unlike a photo booth in the
UWS Nepean Studios. People who entered the booth were asked to
simply have a conversation with themselves or another real or
imagined person. they could choose to save the recording they
had made or delete it if they wished. A number of video hours
was recorded in this way. I had intended to use the recordings
in some way for an upcoming exhibition and end of year assessment
during my undergraduate studies. I sat for a number of hours looking
for elements of the dialogues I might connect together to produce
a coherent work.
What
happened is that most of the stuff was pretty ordinary general
skylarking and bum pointing etc, but I was stunned to come across
six pieces that left me feeling at once excited and with a strange
feeling of being an accidental voyeur. There were elements of
the dialogues that demonstrated what can only described as 'beautiful
narcissism' others showing the power of destructive relationships.
I cannot say if the people who had recorded the pieces had left
them purposefully or just forgotten to delete the material, I
took a clue from the image of one of the subjects rushing from
the booth in tears, she had taken on the persona of her father,
even using her hair to imitate his beard.
I
did present the work but in an unreadable format, the six recordings
fitted onto two video cassettes, I then heated up a large container
of encaustic medium with a red dye and dipped both cassettes into
the medium then air dried and presented them as objects.of
choice.
