Independent Project Proposal
Arts Research into place and placement
To explore how an artwork and its placement can create a space for the reconsideration of serviceable homogenised places.
Project overview
This project will build on previous practice to explore further ideas of how placement and situation feed into the understanding of an artwork. How the gallery can effectively act as a frame for re-experiencing the familiar. Creating an artwork and academic document that will question the relationship between spaces designed around use and behaviours therefore which become embedded in response to the serviceable environments which we construct for ourselves.
Background/Context
Reproduction and replication are well-practiced in arts production however my work is focussing upon how replication functions physically and conceptually in relation to the original or reference of that which is being re-presented. Exploring homogenised spaces which are characterised by this sameness and so looking at notions of originality and simulation. Public space is, at least to some degree, designed around ease of use but in turn also shapes our behaviours. These featureless spaces of travel, business and commerce disorientate as their familiar, repeated interfaces appear in many spaces. Personally a feeling of location an event is lost in these places of flow and transience. This project will focus on ideas of reproduction and simulation, place, non-place and placement , function and utility. Taking the influence of artists such as Thomas Demand, Tatiana Trouve and Richard Wilson. Reading and research for this project will pay attention to Of Other Spaces, Micheal Foucault, in which he creates and defines the term hetrotopia. Also looking at the conflicting writing around notions of the Simulacrum, of the 20th Century. Further, contextualisation of how the gallery as a context can create content within an artwork.
Project Aim
The aim of this project is to reframe homogenised space in the context of a gallery, creating a spatial environment where a viewer’s consideration of place, placement and function is provoked both spatial and conceptually.
Research Questions
How can the gallery act as a framing device to reconsider embedded behaviours.
How can placement, emplacement and displacement can be used to generate a situation where familiar experience is conceptually reconsidered.
Exploring whether the recreation of reality in the space of an artwork and context of a gallery exists conceptually as a simulation or a copy or as something else.
To reconsider ideas of function, what is function how and for whom, the utilitarian approach to function rendering it less useful perhaps.
Who does space/place ‘function’ for.
Methodology
Our behaviours in relation to the spaces around us are embedded and this work will explore if not expose how our learnt behaviours become constructed from our designed environments. It will therefore participate within discourses of place, non-place and space.
As I intend my work to be constructed from placement and situation, my first concern is finding a gallery context outside of York in which to situate my work. This will be my starting point in creating an event/exhibition that will explore ideas of function, placement, reproduction and behaviour.
Ongoing will be visits made to spaces which Foucault terms Hetrotopias such as hotel rooms, hospitals and cemeteries which Foucault describes of places of otherness. Also attending non-places as termed by Auge spaces such as supermarkets, waiting rooms as these are nowhere particular. Both non-place and Hetrotopias are problematic terms yet share the fact they are not singular spaces
My blog www.charliebarnesartist.wordpress.com along with reflective journal document will be used to document record and reflect upon ideas and decision making processes as the project progresses.
Proposed Timescale
June:
w/c:11/06 Email Venues for exhibition
w/c:18/06 (Away on holiday) Reading key texts.
w/c:25/06 Contact Venues, spend time in spaces, non-places as research for.
July
w/c:02/07 Advertise exhibition. Begin Drafting Essay
w/c:09/07 Make work for exhibition.
w/c:16/07: Producing any supporting any exhibition material.
w/c:23/07: Essay work
w/c:30/07:
August :
Exhibition Install/ Exhibition/ Exhibition de-install
w/c:06/08 w/c:13/08 w/c:20/08 w/c:27/08
Early August Submit first draft of Academic Essay.
September:
w/c:03/09 Re submit essay draft.
w/c:10/09 Work on essay/ Formalising journal into resolved document
w/c:17/09 Submitting final draft of Academic Essay
w/c:24/09 Tweaking, amending and printing of final documents
Anticipated Final Form of Project
Exhibition/Event
Charlie Barnes 