In this Chapter Groys introduces the issue of the copy/ documentation in the art world today. He suggests that although a copy or document of an artwork can never replace the original, it can take on the ‘aura’ of its own, taking up the mantle of the original and becoming an artwork in its own right.

For an artwork or a document to acquire an ‘aura’, Groys argues that it must have a history or ‘narrative’ attached to it. For example a photograph of a Van Gogh painting taken on someones Holiday and then exhibited in a exhibition about said holiday will have an ‘aura’ that is at once related to the Van Gogh original piece, the idea of travel and the idea of the reverence we pay to ‘great art’.

Having read this chapter I feel now that my project is about the spreading of aura. I want viewers to be able to access some of the aura of my sculptural work through the different kinds of documentation I have created, even if that means the aura is adapted or altered by the different narrative of each medium an viewing. I feel that often photographed of sculpture struggle to capture any of the aura of a sculpture and so my aim is to capture as much as possible by working with a verity of documentary mediums that can be seen as artworks in their own right, but perhaps with some kind of shared aura.

In the chapter Groys is a little scathing about the idea of the copy, suggesting that we only need copies because in todays consumerist society we all demand and expect to have things brought to us rather than expect to make pilgrimages to originals. I disagree that copies come about dew to human laziness and instead believe that for some people, particularly during covid, copies and documentation are often the only way they can interact with work. For that reason I think it is important for all work to have interesting and affective documentation that should be seen as just as important as the original work.

Art power – Art in the Age of Biopolitics / Isabella Inskip / MA FINE ART 4 STUDIO AND RESEARCH (2020-2021)[YR] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0