Reimagining Gallery Space – A Space of Memory
In recent decades, museums have transformed from mere preservers of historical narratives to dynamic ‘spaces of memory’, a place where complex histories are actively engaged and reinterpreted.[1] These spaces serve as arenas where social and political identities are negotiated and reconfigured against a backdrop of the past they represent.[2] Our Guided Research Placement aims to impart vitality to the history of the Talbot Rice Gallery while upholding critical assessment and captivating the audience. Our objective is to unravel the gallery’s previous life as the Natural History Museum, focusing on the layers of history surrounding the old college building. Through this endeavour, we wanted to achieve the goal of critically reviewing the gallery’s past by creating a narrative that would resonate with visitors.
We drew inspiration from the idea of the gallery as a space of memory, and used this idea as a methodological attempt to connect the present as a contemporary art gallery with the architectural history of the Natural History Museum. Night Walk for Edinburgh (2019) is a work by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller who returned to Edinburgh to collaborate again with the Fruitmarket Gallery following The House of Books Has No Windows (2008).producing a ‘walking ‘ video work. It can serve as a good reference for this approach, not least because, both galleries are based in Edinburgh and share the same context of the city’s historical content.
Night Walk for Edinburgh: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Image: Chris Scott, 2019
Throughout the audio and video walk, following the sounds and footsteps of Cardiff, you will travel through the back streets of the Old Town, unravelling a fragmented story of history, invention and memory. Walking naturally draws our attention to the details of buildings or their surroundings. The artist also shares personal observations and reflections, which together form a non-linear and often disturbing narrative. Night Walk for Edinburgh is an immersive experience that blends memories and observations, blurring the lines between reality and history. As you listen to the artist’s narrative and watch the accompanying video, you are confronted with your unchanging surroundings and contemplate what events these buildings have witnessed.
‘Walking is like the flow of history. One footstep after another, one event after another. Every time we choose an action or direction we change everything that might have been.’[4] –Night Walk for Edinburgh
In this work Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller use walking as the basis for a collage of impressions and experiences, memories and histories using objects, images and, above all, sound, mixing references to high culture and popular culture in works that exist in their own time and rhythms. The works are time-based – that is, they have a specific duration – yet they are open and ambiguous, leaving space for the viewer to occupy and interact with them in their imagination and practice.[3] The artist’s work links fact and fiction, but there is less freedom to do so in the exhibition. There are also two sides to how we critically and creatively approach this ancient building. One side is the visible history, such as the building and some of its decorative details, and the other side is the invisible history. How do we articulate, activate and create space for the visible memory? Equally importantly, the history of the Talbot Rice Gallery is rooted in the Old College of the University of Edinburgh, and a walking tour of the building is highly conducive to engaging the viewer in an active and reflective exploration of Talbot Rice Gallery’s historical and cultural context.
We therefore planned to include walking tours as an element of the exhibition, but this programme faced a number of shortcomings, such as the varying accessibility of the various parts of the Old College building, how to ensure that we always had sufficient pamphlets providing information for visitors to pick up, and the limited opportunities for re-enactments. However, Night Walk for Edinburgh could inform our exhibition. The work is constantly updated and will be reproduced regularly on a webpage constructed by the Fruit Market. and offers a solution to our problem: the artwork is presented via a mobile phone app, which allows it to be re-performed without the need for additional staff, and all instructions are clearly stated on the app that provides the video. This not only reduces maintenance costs, but also makes the experience accessible to a wider audience. Participants simply sign up online and arrive at the start location at the scheduled time, put on their headphones, click on the audio of the piece, and the experience begins. However, during my experience, some of you may be ahead of schedule, and if you’re not in a group, the route won’t be shown once the experience starts and you may get lost around the next corner. We didn’t have to worry too much about this because the only place our audience had access to was TRG, but we also gave them an overhead map pointing to each attraction. In response to these considerations, we included walking maps and QR codes in the exhibition booklet to ensure that participants could easily carry instructions and information with them.
Vincent Enrique Hernandez, Valley Research Map, 2019–. AAA map, map pins, found images, thumbtacks, corkboard. 40 × 60 in. (101.6 × 152.4 cm). Courtesy the artist
Looking ahead, given more space or time, we could consider an approach similar to Vincent Enrique Hernandez’s San Fernando Valley Tours, which uses material culture to construct memories within the gallery space. Hernandez’s work creates an interactive environment reminiscent of a souvenir shop, complete with road signs, postcards, and a curated photo album that invites attention to the places and people around us, rethinking what constitutes a history worth remembering and digging deeper into where we are and what we remember.[5] The idea of mapping also be adapted into our display design. Such an exhibition design can enrich the thematic experience for those unable to participate directly in the walk, offering an alternative yet meaningful way to engage with the gallery’s narrative.
[1] Daniele Salerno, ‘Stories That Shape Spatialities: Lieu and Milieu de Mémoire through the Lens of Narrativity’, in Reading Memory Sites through Signs: Hiding into Landscape, ed. Cristina Demaria and Patrizia Violi, Heritage and Memory Studies (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), 31–54, https://doi.org/10.1017/9789048544301.002.
[2] Cristina Demaria et al., ‘Spaces of Memory’, Heritage, Memory and Conflict 2 (12 January 2022): 1–5, https://doi.org/10.3897/ijhmc.2.e78980.
[3] Janet Cardiff, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: The House of Books Has No Windows. (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2008), 12.
[4] ‘The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh: Janet Cardiff And George Bures Miller, Night Walk For Edinburgh | Artmag | All The Arts In Scotland’, 8 August 2019, https://artmag.co.uk/the-fruitmarket-gallery-edinburgh-janet-cardiff-and-george-bures-miller-night-walk-for-edinburgh/.
[5] ‘Vincent Enrique Hernandez | Hammer Museum’, accessed 29 April 2024, https://hammer.ucla.edu/made-la-2023-acts-living/vincent-enrique-hernandez.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collier, Morrison-Bell, Ross, Collier, Mike, Morrison-Bell, Cynthia, Ross, Janet, and PM Gallery House, Host Institution. Walk on: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff: 40 Years of Art Walking. 2013.
Mathur, Saloni, Caroline Jones, Patrick Flores, Emilia Terracciano, Brook Andrew, Michelle Wun Ting Wong, Karin Zitzewitz, et al. ‘Why Exhibition Histories?’ British Art Studies, no. 13 (30 September 2019). https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-13/conversation.
Psarras, Bill. “Walking the Senses, Curating the Ears: Towards a Hybrid Flaneur/Flaneuse as “Orchestrator”.” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 23 (2018).
Schultz, Deborah. “Proximity and the Viewer in Contemporary Curating Practices.” Performance Research 22, no. 3 (2017/04/03 2017): 23-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2017.1348657.
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The works used as case studies are very interesting and well researched. It’s obvious that you have taken time to learn about each work, and what their shortcomings and strengths may be. Also, I am happy to see the addition of images to your blog, it makes it more engaging and exciting for the reader, and I will be sure to add images to my blog because of this. The only thing I have to say is that I think you can engage the case studies more with the project brief. You talk about TRG a bit throughout the writing, and the opening paragraph does outline parts of the brief, but I think that you can talk about how the brief and project goals are related and can learn from these case studies. Tying it all together will make this a really strong piece. Overall really well done!