The Empire

Te Tuhi exhibition responce.

The exhibition at te tuhi was interesting. Ideas behind collecting were highlighted in all the pieces.

One idea that I thought about whilst at the gallery was the idea of hoarding, as opposed to collecting.

Daniel Malone's work was a category of his possessions. I define a collection as a group of stuff that all relates to each other in one specific way. His stuff does not seem like a collection to me, however it does all relate in one way, and that is that it all belongs to him. At the end of last year I had to move house, it is only when you move that you realize how much stuff you accumulate throughout your existence. I thought that Daniel did not own much stuff, and it was more of a accumulation then a collection.

However in his work I saw a lot of humour which I liked. There was a tone in his work which kind of made fun of his possessions, and I imagine if you trawled though your own stuff you would have a bit of a laugh.

The peice of art I liked the most was Found Time: Big Ben, by Elizabeth McAlpine. All I could think of whilst looking at it was the Clash song London Calling, It played in my head over and over again. Not sure if this means anything...just an observation. What I really liked about the work was the way it was layed out. We talked about how it was in order and was a collection of postcards. The postcards were in order of "time taken" so older photos were mixed in with newer ones. I thought this was interesting because the natural way of ordering for me would have been date...not time of day.

What I also quite liked about the artwork (and we touched on this a wee bit) is how it is an ongoing artwork. It has a very nice sense of time, a few of the postcards are really old, and it would be really cool to see some of them become quite futuristic, not only is this work a collection of big ben photos its also a collection of time (or has the potential to be).

As the work fills up with postcards it will become harder to finish. This reminds me of level 3 physical education, which I took last year. In fitness training there is a rule called the Principle of Diminishing Returns, this is where as you become fitter, the gains you make in training become smaller. This principle can be applied directly to the art work. I like this because it makes the artwork a project which is ongoing and could take ages to complete.