Pictures at an exhibition

This post was intended to be visual but it became increasingly difficult to find suitable images - and slowly it dawned that of course it was - we are looking for artworks that do not rely on the visual, so we fall back on language to explain them in the absence of the work itself!

Carsten Holler's slides at Tate Modern are art to be experienced. 'For Carsten Höller, the experience of sliding is best summed up in a phrase by the French writer Roger Caillois as a 'voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind'. The slides are impressive sculptures in their own right, and you don't have to hurtle down them to appreciate this artwork. What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the 'inner spectacle' experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend.' [www.tate.org.uk] His Sliding Doors at Tate Modern also relies on the visitor to interact with the piece.

Anish Kapoor's Ishi's Light

also at Tate Modern is a sculpture that you want to stand inside. 'An egg-like structure opens to reveal a dark red interior. Kapoor has related this work to Barnett Newman’s paintings, in which a vertical stripe represents the creation of the universe. In Kapoor’s sculpture, a column of light appears at the centre, produced by reflections from the curved interior. ‘The column of light is like a virtual object’ he has said. ‘It isn’t simply on the surface’' [www.tate.org.uk]

Also appropriate to our sensory exhibition would be these installations (no pictures are available):

Eureka/Blindhotland is an installation by the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles that explores ideas of sensory perception and the physical properties of objects.
The installation draws our attention to non-visual properties such as sound and weight, which are normally considered only as an implicit aspect of sculpture. There are four principal parts: Eureka, Blindhotland, Expeso (a soundtrack) and Inserções. Eureka consists of two pieces of wood and a cross, placed on a set of scales. The title, meaning ‘I have found it’, is the word exclaimed by the Greek mathematician Archimedes when he observed the displacement of water in his bathtub. Blindhotland consists of 201 black rubber balls of identical size, but varying weights. The soundtrack is the noise made by the balls being dropped from different heights and different distances from the microphone. The combined title, then, refers to the reciprocal impact of a body entering a given space, as well as the 'blind’ mathematical principles and physical properties with which the artist is fascinated. The final element, Inserções, is the insertion of four images into newspapers, with no explanatory text, which takes place one day while the work is on display.
A pioneer of installation art, Meireles was influenced by the Neo-Concretist generation of Brazilian artists, such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, whose works often involve the participation of the viewer. ’Blindhotland’ is a generic name given to a series of his works, which incorporate the perception of sound, heat, taste, smell and so forth.
Curated by Ann Coxon [www.tate.org.uk]

Susan Collis
The pieces all use different types of trompe-l'oeil effects in order to investigate issues concerning identity, craft, value and labour. Everyday objects, etched, splattered and stained with the marks of work and wear & tear, are seen, at a first glance to be the secondary results of a primary activity ­ seemingly worthless and easily ignored. I am interested in the shift in perception that takes place upon discovery that they are, instead, the primary activity themselves.

Rose Finn-Kelcey
Rose Finn-Kelcey describes herself as wary of imagery, seeking in her work to produce atmospheres which suggest psychological states with universal rather than specific significance. Her two pieces Steam Installation and The Royal Box, now in the collection of Charles Saatchi and shown as part of the "Young British Artists II" exhibition which ran until August at the Saatchi Gallery, were both commissioned for very different settings. The idea for the second, however, drew directly on the experience of creating the first. This, the steam installation, was conceived for the Chisenhale Gallery, where it was exhibited a year ago. The inspiration for the piece was the inhospitable nature of the gallery--windowless, cold and damp. The desire to give the space some sort of warmth produced the concept of using steam to bring an active life force into an enclosed, forbidding interior.
With the help of a heating engineer, a metal tank was devised and constructed. Steam from the water heated in the floor-based container is drawn upward by a fan concealed in a metal hood. The turbulent cloud is prevented from escaping outward into the gallery space by invisible "curtains" of cold air. The steam thus creates a dynamic cube, suspended in light, forming and reforming as the cold air delicately controls the rising vapor. In the Saatchi space, the atmosphere was peaceful, with the spectators' shadows projected on the walls and on the cloud itself as they contemplated this friendly monster, whose power, as the artist intended, filled the space with warmth and fight.
In total contrast, entering The Royal Box literally chills the blood. From the outside, the refrigerated cabinet resembles a Minirealist sculpture, carefully proportioned, pristinely white. Only a businesslike door suggests that this simple-seeming object might have a function as well as a form. Once inside, the spectator enters another world. In the center of the space, a U-shaped pillar, constructed from ice cubes, rises almost to the roof. Enclosed on three sides by its thick ice walls, which gleam in the bright electric light, the spectator feels safe, at peace. In fact, however, the threat of death is imminent. The temperature, at minus 24 degrees centigrade, is cold enough to freeze the blood after only a few minutes.
Finn-Kelcey's work, which has the most direct physical effect upon the spectator, is also the most universal in its resonance. The two installations are like landscapes for the modern age, re-creating natural phenomena as spectacles within controlled urban settings. They do not suggest the specifically human frailties and failings which Cross and Hatoum choose to explore, but rather the universal vulnerability of humankind in the face of the power of nature. The lovely billowing steam can scald, the gleaming ice can only be made manifest in an environment fatal to those of warm blood. Stepping out of The Royal Box into the warmth of the sun-filled gallery, the spectators find that their clothing momentarily retains the chill of the tomb, while within its immaculate container the ice itself is vanishing as the water which forms it, imperceptibly slowly but inevitably, evaporates.
Taken from Uneasy rooms - installation art; Dorothy Cross at Camden Arts Centre, Mona Haroum at Arnolfini Gallery and Rose Finn-Kelcey at Saatchi Gallery, all in London, England
Art in America, Oct, 1993 by Lynn MacRitchie
[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n10_v81/ai_14565415/pg_2]

Jenny Cordy's Chromosphere - as you pull the sphere over your head you lose all sense of space and distance - it is disorientating in the extreme, yet not uncomfortable because you are in control of raising and lowering the sphere.

Carl Andre's bricks - many of Carl Andre's works are almost flat on the floor and a challenge to 'viewers' who are unsure whether they should walk on them or not. Years ago when the concept of a museum was first realised, exhibits were meant to be handled, but more recently to touch an exhibit has become taboo. Many works today are breaking down these barriers.

Kevin Hunt's Soft Toy Chair - this chair is totally composed of soft toys, and one wonders should I sit on it or just look at it? When I saw this in an exhibition recently I did not sit on it, and nor did anyone else there at that time - the old taboos linger even when they are removed.

Martin Creed's work appeals to many senses, many of them incorporating sound, such as the music that accompanied the lift in ascending tones [Hauser & Wirth ] - the images below are his visual representation of half the air in a given space and Balls ...

Michael Landy's work Costermonger Stall No 3 is a riot of colour but it also engages our sense of smell...












These might be some artists and artworks that we could consider for our exhibition.