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Marking Time CrONICAL June 23 2006
Discussion between artists: Justine Henry, Rebecca Umlauf, Torie Nimmervoll, Jason Maling, Susan Jacobs and four representatives of Conical: Adrien Allen, David Simpkin, Harriet Turnbull and Katie Lee.
AA: Could I get you to start by introducing the project Jason?
JM: The initial idea came from Justine. I’ve been encountering Justine’s work over the last four years and have known her for years, and have always been an admirer of her drawings. Justine’s drawings were taking on a quality that might benefit from going outside her studio. So I suggested to Justine that she might be interested in putting in a proposal. Based on that we thought that we’d like to develop the project.
JH: You had already done the spinning top project at that point, so it had a similar direction to that.
JM: Yeah, but also providing a supportive environment was the original kind of thing. I had a sense your work would have a certain tone and would be difficult to place blindly alongside something else, so it grew out of that awareness into what might be a supportive environment.
AA: There was this original ‘theme’ of drawing in space…
JH: Drawing with space, yeah.
AA: We were looking for a situation where real space could be activated without denying pictorial space. There are artists here, like Tori and Susan, who we have worked with before and we thought it would be good to utilize these relationships, but we were a bit unsure about how you would feel about being put into a completely different context compared to the solo show?
JH: I was quite relieved actually.
AA: Were you?
JH: I haven’t actually had a solo show before, so just the idea of it… There was just something nice about the idea of working with a group and developing ideas with other people.
JM: Perhaps we should just clarify this, as it was pretty central to how the show did develop. The sensibility evident in Justine’s work did really carry the decision to include these particular artists in the show. It would be interesting to get some responses from the others about what they think this ‘sensibility’ is. I’m interested in what that is and how it manifests, because it’s quite present in the show. Could you guys add something?
AA: Or maybe you could explain your individual processes as a way of leading into it.
TN: For me, this is quite a different process because I usually spend about a year working on a project. Jason came to me and said Justine had put in a proposal about drawing with space and asked if I would be interested in responding. Then, we were doing it. It’s kind of working backwards for me in a sense. The idea was already there, and you know I had to work around it. So I learnt a lot from this process.
AA: Was the idea somehow a restraint?
TN: Initially – I mean it was loose – but Justine’s work and Jason’s work was very sensitive, and knowing Conical – it’s quite sensitive too. So I actually got quite stressed out about it initially, but then I just had to relax about it – after a bit.
AA: Maybe rather than a specific idea, there was a ‘feel’ about the connections. Maybe that’s what distinguishes this show from more traditionally curated shows. Rather than a theme that you have to flesh out or at worst illustrate.
TN: Initially when Jason said, “I think you’d be good for this show”, he said that my work was very atmospheric, and that choice of word was revealing. I guess that triggered: ‘okay, atmospheric work’.
JM: I was aware of the piece I’d done (the spinning top piece) and the work that Justine would probably do, and I guess that quality or that feel that Adrien just talked about was what I was thinking about, and that’s why we contacted you (Susan).
SJ: Adrien and I had had a conversation a long time ago, before there was a direct link to this show, and you came back to me Adrien about that conversation as a lead in. At that time the work I was thinking about was about moths. That where the work came from, and that was incorporated into something that had been happening in drawings that I’d done with drilling and sandpaper. Then, bringing that into a space that could be inhabited and then to somehow work through something. And the moths. The original idea with an moth-enclosure being a wedge type shape was to do with the shape of the moth, and something banging away inside, maybe trying to get out. But then that changed.
AA: I recall the idea was sculptural, it was an aviary, a functional 3 dimensional shape.
SJ: That was a long time before.
AA: Well, up to only weeks before this show, but it’s ended up being distilled into something more planar, more formal.
Then the situation that happened with Rebecca – you just walked in and said you were looking for a place to show!
RU: Well, I had an idea of what I wanted to do in the Clearway (stairwell area) for quite a while, and I came in to see if Clearway was still active. When Adrien said that my idea would fit well with a planned group show, I was worried – well not worried – but I was curious to see what others were doing and if it was related.
JM: We took Justine’s proposal – the drawing on space idea – and we had surface containment and gestures and a durational process and then we were thinking it would be good to have a sound element.
AA: Not just any sound element, but to have Rebecca’s work that was so gravitational. It was so much about another form of vertical space. You know to have a chimney utilized (as in Torie’s work), and the verticality of the stairwell were just such interesting links.
Jason, your work was finished a long time before this show was actually conceived. That seems a different way of working to the way you’ve worked in the past.
JM: Yes, it is. But then alongside all the live work I’ve done I’ve always produced a lot of drawings.
KL: Through the process of the live work, as part of that process? Or separately?
JM: Alongside it. This work grew directly out of the Splint project. Especially around the ideas of spatial zones of play – points and radius’ and how things enter a kind of a zone – and what inscribes that. When I was whittling the sticks…well obviously Splint was based around a tool, with no rules, and the equipment had no boundaries, but it was a tool that made boundaries, and that was what I was interested in with this drawing. There was no contextual rules, but it was a tool that could move around. It was a tool that was designed to create spatial boundaries and rule boundaries. So what developed from that – when I was actually cutting the tool or the head of the tool, it was fascinating to me because you were trying to make a point. The tool itself was designed as a compass to make a point and a radius and the references I was using to try and maintain a point of centre with this equipment, before it even became a tool was very interesting. It was this activity that was trying to define itself. But the activity was to make a tool that had no purpose, or didn’t know its purpose. So I took that element directly and asked, “what would you do if you were creating a series of drawings?” Essentially this amounts to a lot of performances, incidental drawings and incidental play around this equipment but it’s purely incidental, so I wanted something that expressed that playfulness but also that complete point. And that got me onto this idea of radius, and the spinning top in my head, with something so frivolous, and something so representative of those things. It prescribes a point and it retains a centre. And I wanted a drawing process that was incidental, but crucial. So the idea was not to create a set of aesthetically decided drawings, but to refine the tool. And the tool was, in a sense, that everything is the result of the tool, and the tool had no purpose other than to be itself and do whatever it did, which was to be itself, and do whatever it did, which is spin.
So those drawings came out of just fiddling around with cutting points. What was curious about it was that I’d started a series of drawings, and normally I work in a very non-precious way and normally I make a mess, and it’s all over the shop and all of a sudden I’m making these drawings which are ultra-preserved in a sense. But I found that interesting in relation to the process. It was all about this very crude, very simple process that then had to be almost protected and contained. Which was against the play kind of element, but at the same time took me in a direction that I’m more interested in now.
DS: Each of the works have that kind of quality. You talk about protection and containment, the other works have a sense of that as well. Like Rebecca’s table tennis balls that don’t know their architecture until they go into the architecture, and then become preserved as a sound file. There’s no evidence of the balls except for the one container at the top of the stairs.
JM: That became a really strong element of everyone’s work.
DS: Yes, and the snails that live on the residues of the drawings.
JM: There’s a hope, and a faith that inhabits the space and inhabits all of the work that I find very interesting.
DS: And the salt stack that collapses on it’s own.
AA: It’s interesting that you talk about hope and faith, because to me there’s a sense of inevitability in the show – almost a futility. When we talk about this show having a restrained feel, we could also say that this show has a constrained feel. The Matisse quote that is used (in the press material) about drawing (‘putting a line around an idea’) – suggests the idea of boundary. We were talking about the stairwell and the chimney – both architectural constraints, yet both providing safe passage. With Susan’s work we’re dealing with a planar trap in a way – an enclosure and Jason’s drawings have been bound by a book-binder. How does this notion of boundary relate to drawing on, or in, space?
The great disappointment for Pollock was that his paint had to land. The inevitability of turning real space, real-time situations into the pictorial – a mere representation of the action. I think we are dealing with that. You know that wonderful Roland Barthes quote that “structure is merely the residue of duration”. In a sense we are dealing with residues, residues that recognise the futility of the material constraint that we all have to deal with… A grappling with structure.
DS: All the work suggests the rhythm of their own production, but none of them spell the word rhythm correctly. It’s a hard word to spell.
JM: It’s a classic: process versus presentation. It’s always present and in many ways never resolvable. And it’s so interesting to try and deal with it.
JH: I realised yesterday –about my drawing – that even if I had another 6 months, I would never really finish it. I’ve been here everyday…
AA: Nor should there be a finish. In the same way the snail gave up…
SJ: Or dried out…
AA: Tried to escape the pictorial trap.
SJ: I think they’re in hibernation, so they’re in denial.
JM: Do you think they are still alive? They have a wonderful way of dying.
SJ: One of them is dead, but they put a seal over where the shell joins whatever surface they are on and then they just go into a false hibernation. I was hoping they’d come back if I wet them. I took a little video of them.
JM: What are they waiting for?
SJ: Rain, dark, quiet.
AA: I’m really interested in you not caring if they don’t succeed in eating through the paper. You’d be quite happy if they died. I mean the ant piece, they evacuated in the first day.
HT: They hung around, they stayed!
SJ: I have had a lot of comments about being cruel to them. It has crossed my mind.
AA: Oh Susan, you disappoint me! I thought you were going to talk about failure, futility and nihilism.
SJ: Well, are people going to be conscious of not stepping on an ant when they walk through the space? Or that they don’t kill a snail in their garden because it’s eating their lettuce, I mean whatever’s going to happen will happen, but…
DS: I just saw on ‘Survivor’ the other day, a woman who couldn’t bring herself to kill the snails, but when she caught this big fish, she just dragged it dead through the sand.
AA: So failure itself was not the driving force?
SJ: No, not so much. It was more about just suspending something or shifting something from one plane to another.
AA: What planes?
SJ: Pretty simply just horizontal to vertical. Just to be able to view something from a different side. Like with the snails and the ants, attaching themselves. It’s interesting that the front, the surface of the drawing and then the back, is just … I guess for the last few years I’ve been trying to make the drawing come out, and open up and be more spatial, and fuse it more with sculpture and space, even though it’s still planar, and relates to drawing,
AA: Or painting?
SJ: With the stretching of the paper over the frame I feel like it’s less about painting. You do that kind of thing if you want colour, it’s more about transparency and working through. The moths would potentially come through the paper, but they’re more about transparency and flatness.
DS: I’ve been pairing them off with the shower screens from the last show. (Lou Hubbard’s work in the show prior: Doubt)
SJ: Oh right?
DS: Slime versus the sublime. I don’t know how conscious you’ve been with the relationship with the group show Doubt when you curated this show Jason?
JM: Not much. I mean I was aware of the success of that show, and the sort of similarities in the process with a similar number of artists and the conscious blending of ideas, so in that sense there was some awareness, but it was never a specific decision to reference Doubt.
TN: It never crossed my mind.
AA: That’s interesting I think of Doubt and Marking Time as companion pieces in a way. Particularly, in relation to our (2005) decision not to program any group shows for that year. This year however we’ve programmed these two group shows, both with titles descriptive of methods of practice, programmed adjacent to each other, both with a similar number of artists, even the practices have similarities. Some of the artists from Doubt have come in to this show and recognised that. The ideas explored are already evident in the practices, rather that something external that is being imposed on the artists, it’s something that the artists have come to naturally or can’t avoid. It’s very much the case here. Certainly the curatorship has been talked about a lot in relation to both these shows.
JM: In the development meetings – and perhaps this was the case with Doubt – everyone involved had an openness to the process.
Yet, people were waiting to see what each other had, and …
TN: Particularly because our work was durational, and would change, so we had to be open.
JM: Yeah, which I think was very characteristic of the process.
TN: For example it was really nice to come in today and see that Justine’s work was now crossing mine. Whether that was an accident or not, I don’t know…
JH: I wasn’t sure…I mean, I knew you wouldn’t mind that I was putting rubber dust into your salt, but I did sort of think, I wondered if I should stop it.
TN:. No! I really liked it. I thought it was great.
AA: Well, that’s a perfect metaphor for the show. I mean it’s a white show, but it’s not about transcendence, it’s about infection.
KL: Talking of infection, did anyone else see the ping-pong ball that came into the space? I came in after the opening and there was a single ping-pong ball in the gallery space, which I really liked.
JM: A few of them came in.
JH: Someone suggested it was the wind blowing through, but…
JM: Do you think someone brought them up when they found them downstairs?
JH: Maybe.
DS: The way Rebecca’s sound seeps from the stairwell into the viewing of these works in a regular, rhythmic interval, was such an interesting contrast to say, Lou Hubbard’s work in Doubt with its aggressive sound track.
AA: Like most successful shows in this gallery, the work or works are spatially aware, and almost territorial by nature. There are micro-habitats in this show – that’s not to say that meaningful relationships can’t be drawn out – but this goes back to containment and to the Japanese idea of “enabling constraint”. By setting yourself up with singular works with singular materials you were able to create some interesting overlaps that you probably wouldn’t have come to if you’d tried a more collaborative piece where individual authorship was more subsumed.
JH: At least two people have asked me if my drawing was a collaborative piece. To me it’s very much my style and my work, but maybe to others it wasn’t so obvious!
AA: I’ve had one person asking me if this is all the work of one artist.
JM: Really? That’s a nice response.
TN: That’s one of the first things people have said, that the work really relates well to each other.
RU: I remember one day we were talking to each other and we realised that a lot of the work was white.
DS: The ‘garage’ formation of the Enclosure space is such a dominant object, and you have to find a way to deal with it, and pushing white against it is one way. Your structures (Susan) look like additions to the enclosure.
SJ: I like the idea that they were wedged between the floor and the beams, but they could potentially be shifted in relation to the salt. So if the salt just wanted to gush out, they could be moved, sort of like pinball flips.
AA: They really do become the pillars of the salt.
There’s a sense of this show being a bit covert, in that it’s not really giving all it’s goods at once. Particularly your piece Torie, where I’ve taken people up the stairs to show them the ‘rest of the work’. In that sense we’re getting a fragment of the work in the gallery space. I like the idea that we’re getting the end result, but there’s all this production going on above, on the roof. Some people have expressed a real curiosity about how the salt actually got into the fireplace. And the footprints have really been, not a sign of disrespect, but a sign of that curiosity, to come closer, to actually look up the chimney, to understand the method.
JH: And “what is this substance?” People don’t know it’s salt.
JM: That it is salt is part of the reason for having the salt bags over there. I think that’s a beautiful way of…
TN: Some people got that experience, and some people got just this fireplace experience, and I think that’s great.
AA: Taking some people up onto the roof – those who expressed a desire to understand something more about the work was revealing. What’s interesting to me is that it’s a usage of the space that plays with the role of the façade, and what lies behind it – the so-called substance. Torie’s is a really interesting take on this old inside/outside discussion. You’ve dealt with that quite elegantly, in a way that was suggested in your balloon piece (The Balloon, 2005 Conical) but has now been taken further – to the ‘real’ action above, in relation to the residue of the real action below, and then the representation of the connection between.
When we climb up the stairs – and you’re not there, you’re out to lunch – you’ve used the same method that David used in his absence where he was represented by a proxy – a representation of him (Testudo 2006 Conical). Your whole set-up on the roof is just so aesthetic – the green ladder, the yellow funnel, the cable-tie, etc – with or without you, it’s just an essential part of the piece.
JM: It lends a humour and a humility to the work. The response I’ve had from people is that the show is quite austere, but after you’ve been in here for a while, it’s actually quite organic, it’s not austere at all.
JH: It’s very soft.
TN: I guess with any artist there is a really practical side of things – bumping in a show is always very practical. It’s nothing to do with the art – well maybe – but it’s not what excites the artist. It’s about: ‘Is this straight?’ This kind of represents the labour. So when you (Adrien) suggested that people actually go up onto the roof, it was like: ‘yes!’
AA: Using this means of representing labour is – well I was going to say clever – it just seems right for this situation.
Despite it’s methodical nature it’s not completely strategic and planned. I find it makes it’s meaning as it goes about it’s work-a-day business if you like. The process and the duration of that process make the meaning.
TN: It was a really interesting experience because I didn’t actually see the work being made, in a way. I have been completely absent from it being created. I’ve felt very detached from the actual work.
DS: So you don’t actually see that when you’re up on the roof that that is your work?
TN: I do, but people respond to this (pointing to the salt in the gallery), and I can’t actually talk about it because I don’t know, because…
SJ: You never saw it fall.
TN: Yeah, I never saw it falling.
AA: With David’s work (Testudo) we talked about a mind/body split (David’s body was concealed beneath the floor). With this show there are some interesting correlations with that idea – particularly when some viewer’s heads were stuck up the chimney – looking.
Earlier on there was a discussion between David and yourself (Torie) about his chimney work and your chimney proposition. Has that discussion entwined itself somehow into your work? Maybe it’s just a subconscious thing…
TN: I think it’s subconscious.
AA: I see some exchanges going on between the two works.
TN: They are completely different works. They both deal with space, as in Conical as a space, but they are very different works.
AA: I guess viewing the work in relation to other shows in the Conical program is important for me but perhaps not for you. For you, working in the context of the other artists and their works in this particular show was more important?
TN: Yeah, I’ve thought completely differently the whole way. It’s been really interesting for me working in a group, because I don’t really work in group shows – which is probably part of my personality – so I’ve been trying to cater to other people’s work. I’ve really enjoyed it.
SJ: Same, actually.
DS: Negotiating?
SJ: Yeah, and that you’re keeping a part of the brain open to something else.
TN: It’s like making a composition, like coordinating something, like choreographing.
JM: It doesn’t have that finality of things. Often when you’re planning a show, it’s very scary to think that you have to re-negotiate things. Everyone – in putting this show together – did find at some point find that their plan fell apart.
TN: I think we were lucky in a way – the people we were working with….
DS: Do you think that’s luck Torie? Or do you think it’s that people have worked in this space before, and there’s moments of serendipity…
The reopening of the clearway is really important to this show.
AA: That points to a further role for that space. Not so much as an autonomous space, but as another piece of territory that can be occupied. Not an adjunct…
DS: That was the way it served us in the past.
AA: It served as a critical space, as a response space. But this time around we’re seeing it much more as an integral part of the gallery. I think that that role for Clearway has changed, and that’s really important now, because if we’re dealing with what’s above the roof, then we’re dealing with what’s coming in off the street. People enter the atmosphere of the show once they’re off the street and into the stairwell. So if you have something in the stairwell area that is tearing itself apart from what’s in the gallery it creates an unnecessary confusion.
JH: It’s interesting having to travel through the city everyday, and the noisiness of the city, it was really slow and calm in here, and I think it made me work more slowly.
JM: How have you found the experience, working on this scale?
JH: Well initially very overwhelming and as you know, at first I got really nervous and tight, and it took me about 3 or 4 days to actually loosen up and actually deal with the scale.
JM: Do you think that the work has taken on a character which is specific to this space?
JH: Yes I think so. I didn’t know how I would respond. It’s not just being in here, it’s the whole feeling of the other works that are in here.
AA: What about the people coming in when you’ve been working?
JH: Quite hard initially.
JM: That wasn’t the plan initially was it?
JH: Well no, but I thought I’d see how it goes. I never really liked the idea of working when people are in here, mostly because I feel very self-conscious. You know I can’t work whilst people are in here, I’ll just freeze up or not work naturally. So initially the plan was to do it when the gallery was not open, which is mostly what I’ve been doing. And sometimes I’ve been here when people come in, and sometimes I just leave. I’ve also found that people actually feel that they are intruding on my space, and I don’t want them to feel that way. I want people to have this sense of the work from a distance and then going in to look up close. And they wouldn’t do that if I was in there.
JM: But it would have been a cue to people that this drawing would continue.
JH: Yes, I think that was the good thing about my presence. The times that I was comfortable drawing here, it was because of I was aware of that cue.
SJ: We’ve had a few conversations about that – when the viewer walks away not knowing that you can go upstairs, or what the hell was in that – you know, with the ants going away and there not being a record of that. How do people know that that’s going to go on, and how do you indicate that without leading them? I had a conversation with a friend who saw the salt coming down the chimney, and then when he was leaving, he overheard someone say: ‘Oh, she’s on the roof’ and he really liked the way that that came from word of mouth, not through any ‘thing’. It wasn’t signposted.
AA: That’s the covert nature of it.
SJ: I mean some people might have thought that was elitist of something.
AA: But Torie had the cloak of invisibility and Justine didn’t. Justine was approaching another boundary – that between studio, and performance. And I found that interesting because people’s behaviour changed dramatically when they encountered the artist working in the gallery. It became about the line between the floorboards (they change direction at the junction of the Enclosure and the Gallery). We won’t enter her Enclosure or studio – we’ll stand at a safe distance. Once again we’re talking about the threshold that we have talked about so much in earlier programs. It wasn’t so much a performance. It gave people the chance to be a visible voyeur.
JH: People came up and I had this sense that I didn’t want them to come in, I just want to be here with the drawing. But then I would think “it’s not my space”. But in a way it was my space.
AA: There’s something here about spoon-feeding the viewer. Some responses I’ve observed with this show really brought that home to me. Some people get really frustrated if it’s not just handed to them on a plate.
JM: I find that so curious, because this show is process handed to people. How can you not look at one mark next to another mark, and one mark has a number, and not see that there is a relationship between them.
TN: People have said to me that if you hadn’t put the spinning top in it wouldn’t have made sense.
JH: But what about the shavings…
AA: I’m quick to leap out there and talk to people – talk to or around the show. But I kind of hesitate now. Maybe I’m a walking idiot sheet.
JH: It’s funny that people want an explanation, that they can’t just feel it. I think the work is very generous.
AA: Sometimes that frustration comes from the ‘group show’. Some come looking for a specific artist’s work, and ask where does one work end and another begin? That means we must be doing something right, yet, it’s really frustrating explaining that it’s not ‘a work’, but it’s a cohesive series of works.
DS: That’s a pattern though.
AA: Could these works be individually reconfigured, or could the show itself be reconfigured for a different space?
KL: In relation to your work Jason, the work is part of a book concept that is not here…there is an object aspect to that work that we don’t see exhibited here.
JM: Well perhaps, my work is the least spatially sensitive work that is here, I mean, yes of course my work could be designed to go somewhere else, but as a whole show, no…
Justine Henry Durational Drawing (Detail), 2006
Jason Maling, Calibration (Detail), 2006
Susan Jacobs, Surface Dynamic = one/many (Install Shot), 2006
Rebecca Umlauf, (Detail)(Torie Nimmervoll in background)