Galleries are Kind of Stupid Too

So there we were at the Richard Long exhibition at the Arnolifini as mentioned last week. And it was really enjoyable, especially the text works - which are simple word translations of walks Richard Long did. You look at them and little images click into your mind that combine with the basics of the walk.

After initially thinking about how great it would be to go on these massive walks (I can see the course of the Avon as I write), I start wondering about how exhausting it must be, especially if it's raining, Then there's  the struggle of walking along rivers with nettles and brambles and mud. There's  cows in fields. There's the cold.

Then I'm happy that it's Long doing it and not me, And it's one of those moments where the 'I could have done that' moment - because what is Long is not an 'I-could-have-done-that' artist - slowly turns into a 'No, I couldn't' moment because it's not just one walk he did. it's a lifetime of walks. Really long ones. In the rain, in the mud, in the cold. Fuck that!

So these text works are all about walking. Walking gets in your head and as you go round the exhibition there's more walking and things made whilst walking and references to rocks and the land and all the rest of it.

Then you get to the sculpture at the top of the page. It's made out of Cornish slate and it's lovely. It's a solid thing. It's an X, it's a path, it's a crossroads. It's something to walk on.

It's about walking then. But you're not allowed to walk on it. At an exhibition that is all about walking!

Why not?

I can think of a few reasons but they are all rather arbitrary. The most arbitrary reason, which is also the dumbest, is you can't walk on it because it's a work of art and that's not what you do.

Which is really stupid. But it's stupid in a bad way, because it's based on  made-up rules that the gallery, or artist, can break whenever you feel like it.

So why don't they feel like it?

It's a mystery because the arbitrariness of these rules, which we so universally cling to, are right up there with not walking on the grass, no women drivers, no ball games and no open collars.

Let's do a link in here to Sound, Word and Landscape, at which Paul Gaffney is speaking. His latest exhibition, Stray, took place at Belfast Exposed. It was an exhibition that evolved and developed as the exhibition went on.

From prints on walls, it became a show where multiple projections, darkened rooms and (if it had continued for another week) a floor covering of forest debris would have added to the immersive experience mentioned here.

It's an exhibition where, if there had been a slate crossroads, it would have been one that you could have walked on, a crossroads that coexisted with walking rather than acted against it. And that's what you want in a show about walking.

So how do you show work, how do you involve viewers, how do you develope an exhibition as it is shown, how do you go beyond the arbitrary rules of the gallery.

That will be talked about in Bristol on November 7th. And not just by Paul.

Buy your tickets here. 

Paul Gaffney's new book, Stray Launching in Belfast and Bristol

Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here


If you're wondering what the book is that Paul Gaffney has made as a follow-up to We Make the Path by Walking, you can see this coming Thursday in Belfast.

The book is called Stray and it looks amazing. There's 50 of them, it's handmade, an artist's book, every copy is a special edition, and you will be able to see it in Belfast first. Hopefully, pricing and order details will follow later in the week.

But if you're in Northern Ireland this week, go see Paul Gaffney talk about Stray at Belfast Exposed and see how he is showing it; the darkened room, the eight carousels, the leaves, the sounds, the grass, the pillars, the torches, the injuries....

It's on Thursday 15 October, 6pm

Closing event:  Book Launch of Stray

And you will be able to see and order Stray (it's handmade, so it's made to order) at its launch ( a book can have two launches, for sure, why not) in Bristol on November 7th  where Paul will also talk about the Path, making this work, sensory experience in its vieweing and the importance of music, sound and mind in photography.



Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here

Anthony Luvera's Residency

Another person I interviewed for my BJP article on collaboration (the whole article is in the November issue - or on the ipad version. ) was the ever thoughtful, energetic and talented Anthony Luvera. 

So it seems only natural to follow the previous post - which was essentially about reclaiming art from consumption - with this one where Anthony explains why he is interested in reclaiming photographic representation from the politics of (media) consumption as well as how he showed the work he and others had made on the London Underground. Fabulous!

Anthony Luvera – The Artist

“There is this preconceived notion of a homeless person as a bum or a down-and-out” says photographer and academic Anthony Luvera, “but I’m interested in the experience of homelessness as a transitional thing, as something you experience and then move on from.”

Luvera’s work with  homelessness and changing how it is represented began in December 2001 when he was invited to photograph in London for Crisis, a homeless charity. “I was really interested in the critical writing of people like Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Allan Sekula and A.D. Coleman. They question the context and meaning of documentary photography and how it is represented.”

 “So when I was told how I could help these people and how amazing everything looked, I wasn’t interested. I could have stayed two weeks and made amazing pictures that people hadn’t seen before. But I wanted to develop relationships with people, to hear the stories that they told and to make those relationships a central part of my practice.”

So Luvera rejected conventional top-down documentaries of the poor and gave the homeless people he met cameras to document the people and places they found  important. He also trained them how to use large format cameras and became an assistant in their making of Assisted Self-Portraits.

“Over the next five years, I worked with 250 people  and ended up with an archive of over 10,000 photographs. When I showed this work on the London Underground, suddenly I started getting these weird requests for images. I got requests from a bible manufacturer and a Hollywood costume designer. This  got me interested in the ethics of archives and what they are for and that’s how I got involved with Belfast Exposed.”

In Belfast, Luvera combined his academic with his photographic practice, the latter of which is collected in his recently published book, Residency.  “I’m interested in identity  because it’s a process that is always in flux. I’m not interested in why people are homeless so much as what they think about being homeless and being represented as homeless.”

“In London, I would ask people to take me to a place that was important. In Belfast that had a whole different resonance. If you’re from Belfast you’re from a particular area that carries economic, religious and political weight. So for the homeless in Belfast, there is a double whammy of exclusion because homeless people find themselves excluded from places both socially and politically.”

“There was also a level of suspicion of me as a photographer that I hadn’t experienced before. As a community, Belfast has been exposed to the polarising gaze of photography. Many people I met had memories of photojournalists being at events – this person parachuting in, taking pictures  and leaving. Then they would see pictures of Belfast represented as a rabid, warring place when the reality was very different.”

Through his work Luvera hopes to change the politics of representation and the relationship between the people and places involved in the production, exhibiting and publication of images.  “In Belfast I wanted to  involve the participants in every part of the process, from the photography to the exhibition where pictures were put at eye-level so the viewer would look them straight in the eye. People are used to looking at homeless people from above.” With his work In Belfast and London, that’s a perspective that Luvera is helping to change.

More images from Residency on SPBH

Anthony Luvera website

Anthony Luvera interviewed by Karen Downey at Belfast Exposed