3. W,I.H.E. Festival - Fran Cottell - London, England

 DIS –MEMBER

My work questions how to show the ephemeral, live experiences that make up the quotidian within the fixed frame of the art institution. Further: how to preserve life, or rather the breath of ‘aliveness’. (1)

For the work: ’foot’ for APT+ONE 2018 the gallery’s white reception deskwas extended so that the invigilator’s leg could be displayed through a conveniently positioned hole, at an angle to their body. (The aesthetic of the desk was the same as the gallery walls). A literal double take was intended as ‘foot’ was part of a group show which featured a list of works including: 'Cloud', 'Head' and 'Giant’. The intervention caused a lot of discussion and surprise with visitors and passers-by who assumed that the leg/foot was artificial or belonging to somebody else! There was a rotation of gallery invigilators who responded to the invitation to participate.

Rosalind Krauss in her essay: Grids (2) describes grids as being‘antinatural, antimimetic, antireal’ and the ‘paradigm or model for the antidevelopmental, the antinarrative, the antihistorical’... which means that they can also provide a ‘mutually accessible space’...

The work I proposed to make for DIS-MEMBER was to take a formal structure: the gallery model and then interposes something living,changing and individual.

The participants were invited to lie comfortably on their backs on the living room floor, heads on cushions looking at the ceiling in a radial formation around a central cardboard box. The gallery model was revealed from the box, rather like a cake at a party and the group were invited by the gallery curator to exhibit in the ‘Members Show’ and put their fingers, through the picture shaped spaced holes.... the participant’s ‘finger performance’ proved both moving and hilarious.

                                                                                          Fran Cottell 2019

 

(1) www.francottell.com

(2) Grids Rosalind Krauss October, Vol. 9 (1979), pp50-64 







Performance Action - Dis-Member
Stable Cottage, Novington Manor - Plumpton
28. September 2018
Fran Cottell



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