barren day 8
Space frame
Walking into the studio this morning the transition from work placed within the space to the space becoming the work is clear. A threshold has appeared and it is like stepping into a stage. The changeovers Dave and I completed this weekend have caused a rupture between site and place. The site of the work is the work and now seems to hang unsteadily between the apex roof of artsmith and the surrounding space. At some point we do plan to address this contrast and converse with the rest of the space. For now we have moved to making a space within a space or even a frame within a frame.
In architectural and structural engineering a space frame or space structure is truss like, rigid but lightweight and able to withstand the strain of bending moments. It can take the strain due to triangle like structures which make the load bearing flexible and weight distributed along the length. Dave and I have made frames and altered them to begin to echo floorplans due to my current ruminating over architectural plans but there is no doubt that his photography captures space frames and I keep altering the ways to frame and re-frame spaces including the frame being the work itself. In fact we keep looking upwards to how tops of buildings are supported, their fragility, and exactly what are their bending strains. It is interesting how these vary and how they change the nature of a space – they may not be particularly significant or resonate a poetic moment for interpretation but they do provide comprehension of the function and unity of a space. Most importantly they show the production of the space. Therefore the process, materials and this can be similarly applied to the canvas frame. The stretch bar frames altered and standing as screens in the space offer a view into the production of space including surface, materials and construction. The paper only part fills it and the openings open out onto the space it is within. Dave has now added a found object for his projections – a screen of an open space which now acts like a window. The frames frame the window and the window in turn re-frames the gallery space. This reflective thinking on framing spaces is a part of our re-drawing of this space. It has reproduced it as a floating sterile and purely ideological space with an ideological pictorial image of landscape framed within it.
The four photography of El Taller (1993) document studio space and rely on structure to unify them. It is the focus for discussion on the topography of the photographic space. The blueprints that I have begun to work on which use frames are the beginning of a topography of spaces created and imagined but heavily reliant on structure, process of production, not for preparation but for its image itself. The space assumes a complexity and starts to address the relationship of figure/ground. When separating the components that are in this space I can now see clearly how the addition of Dave’s screen and the use of frames within frames, moving architectural details as borders and horizons begin to make distinct the figure/ground. Rather than my frames being the figure and the spatial ground of the gallery the work itself has become the ground, the apparatus on which to hang the view, images and pictorial images presented. Perhaps it begins to critically look at how the idea of the picture is perceived and in that case sings in unison with Ian Wallace who wrote ‘Corner of the studio and El Taller’ (1993) on these observations. To further emphasise this, is that the gallery space can and does act as ground within contemporary practice and addressing its mode of production and spatial qualities can at times be crucial to the seeing of the image stretched upon it.
