Last week we listened to a talk by the University of Edinburgh art collections curator, Julie-Ann Delaney. I found this talk to be very informative, especially when it comes to selling a work that’s not a physical thing – for example my practice does not produce physical things, I do performances, make films, and installations. It really gave me an insight into what my future as an artist could be like. It was interesting to see how a performance could be sold to an art collection – selling the elements of the performance. It also made me think of the context of a work and how it could be changed from gallery to gallery – some elements may not be possible.
This applies to my art practice at the moment because I’ve been in talks with Pam van de Brug, organiser of the Out of Sight Out of Mind Exhibition at Summerhall – which I am taking part in November. Due to Covid-19, there’s a limited amount of space for work, especially for showing films. They suggested that my film could be shown on a reel with some other films, but I felt like that wasn’t what I imagined my piece to be. I wanted my film to be shown on a TV screen with a telephone speaker plugged into it so that the viewer could listen to the film through the telephone speaker – giving the effect that the character from the film is speaking directly to the viewer. They have asked me to think of alternative ways that I could display the work, just incase I’m not allowed the telephone (as it would need to be cleaned after every visitor). The talk by Julie-Ann Delany really made me think about how a work could evolve from each context it’s in. Perhaps I could still display the work the way I wanted for myself, then have a different version at the exhibition, and a different version on the OOSOOM website.
