PROJECT RATIONALE

BOURNEMOUTH TOWN CENTRE SITE SPECIFIC EXHIBITION PROJECT RATIONALE by Paul Finnegan, Senior Lecturer

The notion that an artwork be exhibited in a gallery is an entirely historical one. That the free communication of art's content is best assured by the provision of a calm, uninterfering white walled space is not an eternal concept. It is in fact a relatively recent conceit.

Modern Art, wanting to separate itself from life, privileged the means of presentation that allowed for this - or at least the illusion of it. It wanted to be autonomous. It wanted to present an experience that was not contingent on circumstance but flowed from the universal. It therefore needed to inure itself of anything transitory (which life surely is), from contamination or change. And made a space for itself to do this - the white cube - a frozen space, perfectly preserving art. A space, that when you're in it, reveals no trace of the outside world (in a modern gallery there is nothing to tell you what continent you are on or what city you are in, no cultural clues what-so-ever). The disorientation is complete - a kind of snow blindness takes effect where the paintings are visually set adrift across indeterminate whiteness.

The claim of art's autonomy is challengeable, and the neutrality of the white cube is debatable. A great deal of issue has been taken with such values. The critique of these and other ideas that Modernism holds dear takes place within Post-modernism. Such questions informed the positions of significant movements such as Situationism. The art value here was given not by the work's autonomy from considerations of time and place but rather by its dependency on them. It was an ephemeral, un-revisitable art.

The statues of Easter Island are deeply dependent upon their context for their meaning. If you were to put them in a museum their meaning would be lost. Likewise, the sacred religious icon only resonates if it is kept in a particular part of the church, and accessed on rare occasions by drawing aside a heavy curtain. Such examples of site-specificity draw attention to the possibilities of art having great power due to its mode of presentation. The gallery seems limiting in these terms.

Hence the rationale of this project is to seek the power and resonance of site-specificity; to connect the art to the environment; to introduce elements that at once absorb and emit energy and meaning to and from that environment.

These are artists who undoubtedly wish to turn life into art. They see the particular qualities of a space as a rich source to draw on. Every site is cultural, historical, social and visual in import. These are the contextual factors from which a creative response is found.

They intend to make interventions that transform our normal experience. They may, accordingly: elevate the ordinary, connect what normally remains discrete, reveal hidden forms, question what's there. They will engage an audience, sometimes one that doesn't even know it is looking at art. And this perhaps is the greatest value of the project - to bring an aesthetic experience to a general public.

Copyright © 2004 Paul Finnegan
Senior Lecturer BA (Hons) Fine Art & Fine Artist
The Arts Institute at Bournemouth