The alternative gallery

In July I heard Sarah Corbett talk about her craft activist practice – read the original post here. If I were to apply tactics influenced by Sarah to think about the way I show work, rather than planning to exhibit to a large number of people I might instead try to establish meaningful connections with just one or two people. In other words, I might stage a show targeted at a specific few, with a very particular goal in mind.

Perhaps this doesn’t count as exhibiting one’s work? However, it is an intriguing idea that might significantly alter what one showed and how one presented it…

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Today’s materialistic life style asks us to exchange time to pay for desirable objects. However, the vocabulary needed to articulate the richness and depths of our lives takes time to master – ‘a certain unhurried engagement’ – it demands we slow down. (1)

Rebecca Solnit describes slowness as ‘an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but because of all that it makes room for, the things that don’t get measured and can’t be bought.’ (1)

Is there any difference in ‘slowness’ in terms of traditional art gallery v online exhibition?

I don’t think the answer is simple. The viewer may slow down when viewing work in a traditional space but one may also rush around ‘consuming’ the work and failing to look carefully. It seems to me few people ever look properly at work at a private view. On the other hand, the online exhibition – the very medium through which it’s viewed – encourages quick viewing, swiftly moving on to the next enticing thing. However I feel it is possible to slow some visitors down – to snag their interest and cultivate a more enriching engagement – although precisely how requires careful thought and investigation.

1        Rebecca Solnit, Finding Time, Orion Magazine, accessed 19th October 2015

The digital age sells the message ‘complex personal, creative, and cultural collaborations’ can be replaced by the right skill sets coming together in virtual conjunction. Solnit suggests this results in a loss. From her perspective something like art shown in an online context might suffer detrimentally in ways that are ‘subtle and hard to describe, especially compared to the wonders of what can be uploaded, downloaded, and Googled, and the convenience and safety of never leaving your house or never meeting a stranger.’ (1)

What’s missing is perhaps concerned with browsing, chance, surprise, risk – uncovering the thing you didn’t know you were looking for that might allow your world to grow in significant and surprising ways – all things impossible to Google for. ‘The virtual version rips out the heart of the thing, shrink-wraps it, sticks a barcode on, and throws the rest away.’ (1)

Technology / commerce cannot cope with subtle, ambiguous complexity that’s difficult to describe and articulate, so it misses ‘myriad little epiphanies and encounters that knit me more tightly into my place and maybe enhance the place overall’. (1)

So I suppose the issues to focus on in my research is, can an online gallery experience offer browsing, chance, surprise and risk? Can it cope with subtle, ambiguous complexity that’s difficult to describe? How does it avoid being about efficiency, safety, speed, predictability and productivity, and focus on epiphanies, alliances, associations, meanings, purposes, and pleasures?

(1) Rebecca Solnit, Finding Time, Orion Magazine, accessed 19th October 2015