ART LICKS
A New Consciousness
Issue 6 Winter/Spring 2012
ISSN 2046 9349 06>
Without Walls
Aoife van Linden Tol
pp 19 – 22
After a two and a half year residency in an old coach house behind the Ladywell Tavern, Tank recently became and independent curatorial organisation whose aim is to work closely with artists to present works in their ideal context. Founded in 2009, by artist and curator Aoife van Linden Tol, Tank established itself with a programme of exhibitions, talks, film screenings and performances as well as a range of workshops and classes. Aoife talks about setting up shop on the periphery of the thriving South East London art scene, her ideas as a curator and what led her to go freelance.
http://tankgallery.weebly.com/
http://aoifevanlindentol.weebly.com/
I don’t know what art is and I don’t care to. The definition of the word itself, about which debate is perhaps only surpassed by that surrounding the word God, can be a dangerous distraction to the understanding of what it actually is. The freedom to approach and situation with no assumptions of what its parameters are allows for more objective and truthful assessment of its existence. Site specific installations, landscape art, guerrilla art, participatory projects and social interventions are but a few ways to describe the kind of work that make my heart quicken and my brain whirr excitedly. They continue to question perceptions of art, while often existing without its framework. In November 2011, Tank took a leap from the classic gallery format to operating without a fixed location, spurred by a conscious decision to become a site-specific curator as well as focus on my own art practice.
This is by no means a rejection of the gallery space. It is the rejection of putting work in a gallery space simply because it happens to be the space that I control. The presenting of works inside a white cube is an arguable necessity in order to efficiently present the art, by the artist, to the desired demographic. Yet, with the continuing rise of the cross-disciplinary artists, whose varied outputs is tied together by a common concept or area of research, questions about where and how they exhibit become increasingly important in order to accurately convey a concept whose context is integral to the work.
Over the past two and a half years, tank hosted a mixture of traditionally formatted and experimental exhibitions. These, at the very least, taught me how to hang well, creating coherent and pleasing dialogue between the works and their environment. At the very best, the exhibitions brushed upon the concepts of construction and formation of art, that I am truly excited by. More importantly, it also spurred some incredible projects, bringing great insights which broadened my curatorial scope.
Tank is situated out in Lewisham. I used word of mouth and a rudimentary mail shot to get the word out. Surprisingly, we didn’t do too badly considering our location, and as the hanging and logistics of the shows became easier, I spent more time working on the promotion. First getting to grips with all the basics like using an online mailing list service, having a website that can be constantly updated from any place at any time and utilising all the free web listings. Then there were three things that happened almost simultaneously which seemed to make a big difference to our exposure; becoming part of the South London Art Map, an unexpected appearance in Time Out’s London’s Secret Galleries feature and taking part in the SLAM Last Fridays. We didn’t open late for the Last Fridays as most galleries do, as we are too far from the madding crowd and simply would not get the footfall. Instead we bought Tank to Deptford and created a pop up show, a talk or a happening that gave us the opportunity to build relationships and engage with the huge numbers of visitors. This was also a fantastic way to create links with other galleries, studios and local businesses who recognise the mutual benefits of supporting each other in developing the area as a cultural destination and something that will definitely stay on the agenda in the future.
I have been told that I get much more involved in the realisation of a project which is perhaps a symptom of taking the artist’s perspective despite the curatorial position. I don’t try to dictate what I want from the artist in the show, they always have as much freedom as possible. I do endeavour to thoroughly dissect what they are doing though and discuss the consequences of every decision from as many perspectives as possible. It is a process I treasure and probably one of my favourite things about being a curator. It is also a major reason I wanted to move away from a fixed space. With both Richard Stone’s exhibition, idir eathara, and Emma Winter’s A Trial of Tales – Chapter 1: Through the Portal, I worked very closely with the site-specific artists to realise the works and ensure the physical and conceptual integrity of their ideas. For Stone’s intervention on the upper level he installed black glass into the window frames, gilded sections of the open beams and placed just two tiny sculptures inside a Victorian dome on the floor. Visitors entered two at a time, wore slippers and listened to a whispering sound piece as they wandered and interacted with the work. This exhibition had always intended to be the inaugural in a series, experienced as one continuous fairy tale story, leading the viewer across London over an undefined period of time. We worked so intimately in realising the first chapter, with Winter taking up residency in my flat for the two weeks running up to the show, it seemed logical to continue the partnership for the continuation of the project. If I aim to maintain support and involvement with site-specific artists then I must be prepared to move with them in order to find the ideal spaces for their work.
One format that worked incredibly well with Tank and that I would like to see if I could continue was the dual exhibition. The split-level meant that we could, in effect, present two solo exhibitions simultaneously. The contrast between the bright, open beamed upper level and the cool, dark and more enclosed atmosphere of the lower level added a unique opportunity for dialogue and potential collaboration between the artists. Stephen Lee & Maria Chevska’s exhibition, eye of the blackbird, worked particularly well in this respect. Both cross-disciplinary artists deal with multiple perceptions of object within a landscape. Stephen Lee explains that he is ‘particularly interested in places where human activity and objects interact with the surrounding environment to create a heightened sense of time as metaphor’. Chevska explores the materiality of land as object in itself, using the displaced fabric of her urban landscape such as cobblestones, as her canvas. The artists worked together to develop the exhibition and through this process their differing approaches influenced and enhanced each other’s theory and practice. I believe the pairing of artists can create a unique focus around a subject, which in turn gives the show a conceptual depth, which is often clearly felt, but visitors. How theory somehow becomes manifest in the physical, so that even those with little or no art background can sense and respond to it, is an intriguing phenomenon. This is, I suppose, what all artists hope to achieve to some degree.
Putting together the exhibition Books in Limbo, was without doubt one of my favourite experiences at Tank. The availability of thousands of discarded books from a source in North London began excited conversations with a medley of curators, painters, sculptors, writers, teachers, students, philosophers, poets, actors, dancers, critics and mixed media artists. Deeqa Ismail, Ese Erheriene, and Samantha Huang and myself are credited as creating the exhibition. However, the concept grew from the exchanges between all parties, and so, from its inception, a natural order of involvement formed, based around individual and group discourse. The books were duly collected, (a feat my little van just about coped with!) and each creative participator addictively rummaged through 1980’s Beanos, the mouldy encyclopaedias, The Jackie Collins and the classics, hoping to find what they were looking for without having any idea of what they might be. Similar metaphors of life revealed themselves as we each gathered our personal little stash of special books we wanted to work on or simply possess. We became dizzy with the nostalgia that the immanent destruction of old and once-sacred items brings.
The responses to the sublimely infinite possibilities of the metaphysical investigation of the book, ranged from the singular to the collaborative. Peter Suchin made his point by obliterating the skinned cover of 1984 with one thousand nine hundred and eighty four dabs of paint. In complete contrast Samantha Huang’s naked, twisted and fanned novels, multiplied across the brickwork, merging with Deeqa Ismail’s living gardens, grown inside wall-mounted assemblages of books and found objects. The random amalgamation of curatorial, philosophical and artistic roles between practitioners was especially interesting and with much of the exhibition communally realised the parameters of individual authorship were lost. Specific allocation of titles or credits would have thus been inappropriate and so besides a simple list of participants, we ironically utilised the power of speech to impart the details to viewers. The risk of such an unknown outcome was also very exciting, especially as not everyone was from a fine art background. Yet the industrious ease with which it all came together was surprising. I hope to instigate fresh incarnations of this exhibition in new settings, while maintaining the essence of freedom and depth of engagement that the participants had with the objects and each other.
Curating in the streets and other public realms, whether covert or officially sanctioned, also brings up questions of ownership and autonomy. How is the work viewed and by whom? How is information about the work and the artist disseminated and does it need to be? I recently exhibited a series of retro-flective signs on the exterior of the building during Tank’s ultimate exhibition at the Ladywell site, Viewing Stations by Edward Chell. Mimicking the parking sign they were situated next to in form only, the small blue panels alerted the viewer to look out for common ragwort, lady’s bedstraw, hemlock and wild teasel. Chell’s work investigates the edgelands of Britain’s motorways: a forbidden land where wild flowers flourished, in conflict with the cold precision of functional architecture and endless tarmac. On the North facing exterior wall, viewable from Ladywell Road, and inside the gallery, more immaculately rendered motorway signs displayed their instructions, but instead of major cities and primary routes, the viewer is directed to short poems by Joe Moran and Andrew Taylor. Although these works looked superb on the walls, their real home ought to be integrated with roadside signs, where oncoming traffic can shine on illuminated words and delicate symbols of nature, giving them right of way, with informative authority. I am still not sure how to resolve some of the questions or whether they need to be resolved at all. Work can exist without the need for explanation, after all, and there are many ways to impart information, should it be necessary, without interrupting the intervention, but suitability needs careful consideration where the relationships of such works to their environment go beyond that of an artwork.
In a way I see art as an operating system. Once allocated as art, a work or idea belongs to a platform by which it can be presented and discussed. Sometimes art is the only platform available to discuss a work or idea and so it becomes subject to the rules of art criticism, when in fact it can be many other things besides. Many of the walls that previously enclosed art’s boundaries have already crumbled to the point that some critics and art world experts now complain that the amalgamation of art within popular culture is so intensely saturated that it is impossible to tell what is or is not art. This is one reason I try not to think about creative output of any practitioner solely in terms of its artistic value. As with the historical development of written language, the new language of art, if there is one is out there, alive and living amongst the chaos. I simply look forward to continuing to investigate the reality of what exists, both within and without walls.