Monday, January 17, 2011

'The unframed'...


Installation wall piece (details 2010)...in making tentative preparations for my final Masters exhibition the quiet dilemma I face is how to present things...I am always left in two minds as to whether works need the formality of a frame or if they flow almost like a stream of consciousness across the gallery walls...the easiest solution is to divide the show into framed and unframed works...although framing is capable of adding  a certain austerity  to prints or works on paper that I often like, in the past few years I feel as if the prints and the fragments need their own space to breath...their own edges providing the only frame...often the expectation of the buying public is the need for things to be framed...sometimes all it takes is a little imagination...what the unframed structure provides is the uninterrupted reflective engagement with the work...a continuum of a single yet fractious experience...that way things are capable of staying close to how we connect and disconnect with the past and the moment within everyday experiences...this way there is very little lost in translation...for these works I think that a frame brings a distraction...an unwelcome interruption to proceedings...one could argue that a frame provides a focus...keeping the experience of the viewer captured for a longer period of time...perhaps these works don't require that kind of focus...unframed the viewer finds something but then before one is able to focus too intently the edge meets something else and so you move on...they offer that sense of a continuum of reflective experience...but the thing is that on a gallery wall you can always return...sp






1 comment:

  1. I think people mostly want to know that when they get home they can hang their purchase straight on the wall, without having to think about how to do that.

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