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by Ruth Barker, 2 Nov 2009

Hello,

feeling rotten this week as I’m down with the flu, and so haven’t done anything interesting lately. I even missed out on the openings this weekend at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Warehouse of Horrors at SWG3 Julia Dottoli at Arch 1, and Ciara Phillips at Washington Garcia. I’m told they were all great, which hasn’t done much to cheer me up, I confess.

I was reading this today though, which was stirring my slimy brain into action. It’s a BBC article in which Inverness Councillor Jim Crawford criticises the recent Re Imagining the Centre event.

The BBc reported that “Mr Crawford said covering the tombstones was in bad taste and claimed people did not understand the wider project.” However, there are several more specific comments that I find very interesting. The first is a subtle thing, and hinges around his apparent dissatistfaction with some of the sites selected for the temporary public works that were commissioned.

Describing Ginny Hutchison’s Seven Sunsets Crawford is quoted as saying “Gold was painted in strips to represent sun rise or sunshine onto a doorway of the Victorian Market. In the evenings the doors are far enough back that local teenagers and alcoholics use it as a toilet, so the gold turned green.”

Initially I was unclear as to why Hutchison’s work in particular had been mentioned, but perhaps Crawford’s reticence can be read in a few of his remarks. Leaving aside the Councillor’s ambivalence regarding the specifics of the work (Hutchison actually gold leafed particular areas in several public locations within the city in a literal mapping of sunlight), Crawford’s criticism seems to be that the artist has made an undesirable aspect of the city centre (a recessed doorway that people urinate in) more visible by siting an artwork there. In addition to this, Crawford also seems to find the work less successful because the gold leaf itself reacted to this undesireable activity by changing colour. This perceived lack of sucess may be because the work acted as a ‘sign’ to the behaviour, or it may be connected to a concern regarding the work itself: that because the work was altered it was rendered ephemeral and so less worthwhile or less value for money; or that because the work was altered it no longer represented the artist’s original intention and so was in some sense flawed.

To take these points seperately, it seems clear in the first instance that for Crawford there is a clear link between the artwork and a sense that it should embellish or describe the aspects of the city that he himself finds pleasant, uplifting, or rewarding. This link between – essentially – artwork and beauty (or even morality) is one I find particularly interesting in the context of public art. Personally I don’t think that such a relationship is a given, though I know that many artists feel that their practices do (and ought to) inhabit a positive sphere of influence. You can read a longer text I wrote about ideas of ethics and aesthetics here although the issue with Hutchison’s work is also more complex because she has undeniably introduced something beautiful and precious into the space, and it is by this act that the pre-existing unpleasantness has been made more visible, and perhaps more public.

That the work may be less successful because of its ability to be affected by environmental impact is tied to Crawford’s final, underlying criticism, which is one that I found suprising in this context. In my first reading of this piece I expected the Councillor to say that the money could have been better spent (which he does). What I did not expect was to read that Crawford wishes that the money had been spent on a permanent public commission for the city.

This is a crucial conversation, and one that I hope the Councillor is able to follow up: the relative value of permanent versus temporary commissioning. It’s not something I can claim to have the answer to, but it is something I hope to be able to touch on during the present season. How do we understand the benefits (in artistic, as well as in implementational, historical, and economic terms) of something that is meant to last forever, as opposed to something that may only last a day, or a year, or even an hour?

I wonder whether Jim Crawford’s regret over Seven Sunsets is partly to do with loss at its passing? Perhaps it is not. Perhaps he feels that public money was spent on something that ended up showing the city in a bad light by highlighting the very antisocial behaviour that he would wish to erradicate. If he reads this, he’s more that welcome to join the discussion on-site. To be clear, I’m not trying to take sides in any debate about whether a permanent work should have been commissioned instead, but only to examine why someone might have found one of the works that was commissioned, problematic. It’s always worth talking clearly about the work that does exist as well as speculating about what might have been, after all. And if it’s true that one of Hutchison’s Seven Sunsets turned green through ill-use, then surely it’s also true that the other Sunsets did not and that they succeeded in bringing light to the luminous potential within the Inverness cityscape though their elegant, poetic, and above all beautiful, urban gestures.

More later,
R

Comments

  1. 10 Nov 2009

    ginny hutchison

    It was important for me when producing work for Re-Imagining the Centre to get some sense of how the city functioned and the culture that existed within it. Periodically visiting the city over the course of the summer and documenting mostly people, architecture and rubbish, it struck me that to understand the popular social quarter of the Old Town I had to step back from the noise and see what was going on in the periphery.

    In documenting the sun’s trajectory over the town and highlighting selected areas with a reflective material like gold leaf my intention was three fold…to highlight how certain spaces around town were used and by who, to create an opportunity for people to engage with these spaces in a different way and at a specific of day, and to put the spaces in context with the natural environment.

    Using a material like Dutch Gold, which is a metal leaf made from mostly copper and tin, gave me the opportunity to reference all these ideas. As a reflective material the work was able to mirror the time and action of the sun over and through the town and because of it’s copper content over time the surface would change, absorbing different moistures from the surrounding environment and producing particular patinas.

    It was always my hope that this work would work on several levels, that firstly it would be easily accessible as a public work by using a traditional and very aesthetic material like gold leaf, that the process would allow me to gain a better understanding of the spaces and to engage with the people who used them, and that over time the work will begin to mirror the state of these spaces and will draw attention to what occurs in them.

    In the context of public art there are three issues within this blog that I think are of particular interest:

    1. The issue of temporary vs. permanent
    2. Legacy
    3. Artistic beauty

    In Cathy De Monchaux’s permanent public work “The Day Before You Looked Through Me” installed at Cullercoats Metro Station on the coast of NE England, a clause in the contract allows the work to be re-evaluated by the artist and de-commissioned if necessary. This brings into question how permanent is permanent, how permanent does permanent have to be to be successful, or even at what stage does permanent become unsuccessful?

    I certainly felt that having been given the term ‘temporary’ to use in Inverness gave me an easier ride or a pass to explore certain aspects of the city that I might not have otherwise been able to, such as access to certain spaces or even the opportunity address how the work will change. Funnily enough the people who I thought would have reacted badly had it been permanent thought differently and were in two camps, those who saw it as an improvement to a space they used frequently and saw the temporary nature as a loss, and those who thought it was a waste of money to have something they perceived as having no lasting legacy.

    This leads to the idea of legacy within public art or the relative value (artistic, implementation, historical, economical). For me gaining a better understanding of the community through engagement (through research, implementation and ongoing documentation of the changing works) has great social value. For the many people who used the spaces during and after the installation the work has perhaps been a catalyst for talking about the area and about their own feelings towards it, while also creating an understanding of different artistic processes.

    It also has an accessible aesthetic in the beauty of the material, which because of its changing nature will begin to reference other issues with the space and maybe with this, all be it unsociable participation, create a link between public artwork or permanent public monuments and popular culture.

    Ruth also begins to talk about the link between artwork, beauty.. ‘(or even morality)’ … and that perhaps Councilor Crawford feels that the work should …’embellish or describe aspects he himself finds pleasant, uplifting or rewarding’. I hope that I did provide some uplift with the nature of this work in it’s initial state, but I also hope that I addressed some of the more important issues within the city and that in this lies some form of legacy be it social, artistic or economical. My purpose however, was not to contrast any ugliness within the city with the intensity of the gold leaf, on the contrary it was to highlight the aspects of the spaces I felt were interesting, important or beautiful, be it people or aspects of the environment.

    Do I feel it’s important however that public art practice should inhabit a positive sphere of influence? I agree with Ruth, I don’t think it should be a given, but I think it has been an influence on some of my own practice of late, at least in order to provide a more comfortable platform in which to talk about other issues.

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  2. 3 Nov 2009

    Matt Baker

    As one of the curators (with Susan Christie) of Re-ITC, I have a some observations here…..
    1. In advance of the project the pressure we found ourselves under from the city was to ensure that the work would all be removed promptly afterwards ie ‘we would clear up’. After the event the criticism of the ‘temporary’ nature of the work began to emerge. At first I was bemused – did this mean that they liked the work and wanted it to stay (there had been some amazingly positive reactions to the work after all – including 7 Sunsets)…alas no….this was merely an inarticulate expression of dislike for the work – given vent with some form of quasi ‘common-sense’ justification (ie not being around for long enough to justify the expense). Can we really believe that Councillor Crawford wanted the work to be around for longer? I am happy to report though, that his was a lonely voice in the Council chamber – Re-ITC received support of the vast majority – see: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1406877?UserKey=

    2. The reference to the work changing colour due to people pissing on it is very interesting…..firstly this is precisely why Ginny chose the site and she was specifically interested in the chemical effect that the urine would have on the gold. This ‘toilet’ is a very well known local ‘landmark’ (the jannie of the market will gladly show anyone some choice excerpts of CCTV footage!). Inverness Old Town Art have been working with the Market in Inverness for 2 years and are behind an initiative to create a new security screen to prevent access to the market lobby at night (– this features a the first public artwork by Gordon Robin Brown). This work will be installed by the end of the year. So, in many senses, Hutchison’s work functions as a delicate (and transitory) memorial to an inebriated Invernessian tradition (that will not be missed by many).

    3. The issue of the serious value of temporary art practice is a vital one -when considering music, theatre, sport etc the duration is not usually the measure of worth. It is understood that the experience of the phenomenon is the ‘art’. In Inverness we have been concerned to develop an ongoing and meaningful conversation with people and place, and through that to play a part in the ever evolving sense of identity in the city – we have deployed a number of methods in this, including both ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’ work as we judged appropriate to the unfolding situation that we found ourselves to be part of.

    Personally I make no distinction between temporary and permanent artwork (as everything is temporal if you take the long view) rather time is one of the materials at the disposal of the artist and creative and genuine engagement with context will suggest the appropriate scale of temporality to be employed at any particular moment. Value would be more usefully assigned to the duration of the effect on the experiencer of the art than to the physical longevity of the materials – if we apply such a measure to human beings is Councillor Crawford suggesting that short lives are worth less than longer ones
    Matt Baker

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