After Dan Graham

A talk made in response to 'Me, Myself, and I' by Kelly Large, at The New Art Gallery Walsall.

Click here to hear the talks.

. . .

invitation

I’d like to invite you to contribute to a work I am planning as part of my residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall.

A requirement of the residency is participation in a series of ‘open studio’ afternoons and it is for these events I am keen for your input.

During the residency I have been preoccupied with the conditions of production that a studio in a gallery presupposes – particularly the requirement of the physical presence of the artist in the studio involved in a visible and coherent process of production that an audience can interact with and that leads to a resolved and public outcome. I am interested in the various states of ‘being public’ implicit in the ‘in residence’ model and how this ‘publicness’ is embedded in the ways in which artist’s production is represented within art institutions more widely.

I have spent most of my time during the residency fighting the urge to ‘escape’ or ‘absent’ myself from the gallery studio and the social productivity and ‘publicness’ it demands.

As a result I intend to remove myself from the open studio sessions entirely. I am inviting a number of people to give these presentations in my place using their existing knowledge of my practice and I was wondering if you would be interested in contributing to one of these events?

This would involve giving an informal, ten minute presentation describing your ‘understanding’ of my practice in the artist’s studio at The New Art Gallery Walsall. There will be at least two other contributors offering their version of what I do, in the same session, so you won’t be alone! The presentations will be followed by Q&A with the audience (general gallery goers, students, regional artists etc).

Other contributors include: Marsha Bradfield, Mary Anne Francis, Helen Jones, Emily Marsden, Rebecca May Marston, Elizabeth Rowe, Becky Shaw, and Gavin Wade.

All of whom are artists and curators I have worked with or have met through other art activities – some who have an in-depth and sustained dialogue with my practice and others who have a partial understanding of my work or a vision that is framed through very specific circumstances.

As such, I anticipate that contributors will offer a range of versions for my practice that draw upon the partial, fictional, deeply personal, anecdotal, idealised and generalised information they hold. Ultimately I hope the presentations will be shaped by each speaker’s interest in the production, exhibition and reception of art and how these processes are represented in art’s institutions.

Kelly Large

. . .