Saturday 19 March 2011

Intervention Art and the perils of

I am new to the concept of Interventaion Art. What I know is basic. I don't know the artist and what the consequences of their actions are. Well at least I know what the consequences of my own action though. It made me quite shame-faced, on tenterhooks and slightly embarrased. The origins of the opening statements have transpired through my own slightly ad-hoc interpretation of the whole Intervention genre.

It all happened on the 10 March when I found a very screwed up invitation to a gallery opening in the computer room of the University...there was three names of international art students from my university and they was from three different aspects of art. Sculpture, Painting and Video: but all 3rd year Fine Art students. I decided to check them out as one of them was a process artist and that is what my art is slowly evolving into. With a few friends we attended the somewhat small scale exhibition but wasn't that impressed with it. It seemed to be lacking pizzazz somewhat. I saw one of the processed art (sculpture) pieces on the upper level and liked it. I tried to find the artist but after looking and asking to indifferent gazes I became a little erratic.

After a while I decided to do some Intervention and place some sweets within a box which had panel pins in it. I didn't think this was really part of the piece (which is the board with pinned see through jiffy bags) and it had four empty chambers. I placed the four squared apple-sour cubed sweets and left.

The day after, I was in Uni doing computer work again when the artist, the painter and the artist's mother tracked me down and began berrating me. I apologised 'whole-heartedly' twice and I explained why. I basically said that I loved her work and wanted 'augment' the work. She wasn't that impressed and began beratting me again. The mother lookeed at me like she wanted to do things with my internal organs and I walked away a little crest-fallen and went home feeling like a little child.

At home I did some large scale research on the genre of Intervention Art and it's begins and found that it was performance based and evolved from the Dadaists, Situationists and other performance based artists such as the Flux communities. I felt less shameful and began to think of the reprecussions of my actions.

As I have two exhibitions coming up, one external and one at the Uni-Link Gallery, I am supposing that Marianna is going to have her fun (at my expense) which she is truly entitled as I have...ruined her work...by placing the sweets. We met on Thursday where I am part of a collective where I was finishing my sculpture. She told me me that she was coming to the gig and asked that she con 'Intervene' with my work. I promptly answered in the affirmative and the even quickly warned the group.

She did arrive two hours after the opening and I greeted her then showed her to my sculpture. I then welcomed her to start her intervening which she answered "no", she left after a few minutes. Well, if her idea of having fun was to make me stew, she succeeded. The whole interaction was recorded onto digital video.

To summarise, Intervention is fun when doing it but has to be done either covertly or mutually. I like the concept and going to play with the format some more. And I do apologise Marianna if I have offended thee but it wasn't intentional.

After talks with some other artists, it transpired that this was an 'intervention' piece of work and the intervention was that the viewer has to knock pins into the piece with the tools left on the desk. It all meant that my action was the 'wrong' type of action to take and I feel it very elitist. The artist's next show surprising was a 'intervention' piece that enabled the viewer to respond and to create, interestingly.

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