the first of some photographic snaps taken on a recent visit to see the Snap 2012 exhibition (Art at Aldeburgh Festival) at Snape Maltings… first up, situated close to the car park – L’age d’Or (green) by Gavin Turk
it has the inside/outside dimension, audience interaction and the inevitable question & answer flow of ideas about ‘time & place’ with an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ charm. children and adults like this.
why did i think this would be painted bronze? it’s painted wood…
some peeling paint…
another view of the large door…
the white panel (with viewing window) is by Matthew Darbyshire & Scott King (it’s unclear which part is Matthew’s contribution to the work, assigning the view through the windows?) and it is one of a series of four faux or imagined texts attributed to notable writers or artists, ‘Ways of Sitting’ (a humorous play on ‘Ways of Seeing’):
One current trend in Conceptual art is quite beyond satire. This strand of art is built from disparate and insignificant historical minutiae, that is re-presented as ‘knowledge’. These artists scour Wikipedia in search of ‘rare’ but ‘cool’ information; once they’ve discovered some suitably (and understandably) obscure facts, they re-present the facts in an art gallery. Of course they can’t just re-present these facts in ‘raw form’ – it’s essential that the facts become ‘art commodity’ (video, sculpture, etc). The result is a complex puzzle of abstruse reference points. A hundred reference points, but no actual point… A kind of exploded jigsaw puzzle for the casual Barthes reader perhaps? A parlour game for the curator, critic and collector. I’m unsure if they yet call it ‘Wiki-Art’.
Victor Burgin, Art and Politics : A Reappraisal 30 July 2010
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(art, it’s a snap; to be continued…)
