As always as I walked around the Arsenale I was interested in how work had been hung or presented. In particular I was looking at the way 2D work had been framed or not framed and how this was helping to shape the meaning or audience relationship with it. So my final post on Venice looks at this and then wanders off away from Venice into more general thoughts about the frame as a type of frame within a frame, or physical Venn diagram.
Jill Mulleady
When looking at the work of Jill Mulleady I was as much as anything fascinated by how she had had her images presented. I have put up the occasional post on framing and if you read my previous posts you will be aware of how irritating I can sometimes find works framed inappropriately. It is perhaps hard to see from the image of her work above, but she had had every painting she exhibited in the Venice Arsenale sunk back into the wall, so that the images were flush with the wall's surface. The wall was also painted matt black, so that the 'washed out' or watercolour feel to her paintings was emphasised.
Jill Mulleady
It's interesting to hear her talk about the narratives that she uses, she is very aware of the changes in emotional intensity between urban and rural subjects. I presume the black was for her a way of heightening the difference between the two moods she was dealing with. By sinking the images into the wall she is also able to get away from the 'objectness' of the paintings and in doing so seeks to gain a narrative unity in a similar way to how a series of wordless graphic novel images might work together. The Japanese artist Mari Katayama often uses very elaborate frames for her photographs of herself and her ongoing elaborate scenarios that reflect on her own disabilities. Katayama had both legs amputated when she was a girl and has since had to use a range of ever changing prosthetics. She photographs herself in various elaborate stagings, herself and her prosthetic legs, usually being centre stage. Investigating issues of beauty, frailty, sensuality, femininity, vulnerability and characterisations of her physicality as being less than able bodied. Katayama confronts society's obsession and anxieties about bodily appearance. Her adjusted frames work to support the ideas going on in the images. Elaborate gilt frames, (seen in the past as symbols of classical beauty) have added inserts, sometimes very obviously screwed into them, suggesting that they are somehow made less whole by the additions or in several cases lots of empty shells made into a decorative line. Shells can in some ways be thought of as cast offs, empty forms that the creature that inhabited them no longer needs. Katayama's old prosthetics are also cast off as she grows or as she changes her personal sensibilities.
Mari Katayama: Framing details
Martine Gutierrez
Framing is a form of presentation and I would suggest that hanging is a powerful alternative possibility when it comes to presenting flat images. Ricardo Garcia's huge drawings in the Venezuelan Pavilion hang as banners cutting into the space, the red lighting further creating an atmosphere tense with expectation.
Ricardo Garcia
Jonny Meah
Jonny Meah
Jonny Meah always works out his images through drawing, the one below being his solution to the problem of a boy/girl. I find his work really powerful and think it would be interesting to see his work alongside that of artists that are seen as part of the high art canon. On the other hand of course the societal attitudes that he was reflecting upon when he was working have changed, what was at one time seen as freakish, is now seen as simply part of the human condition, we are far more prepared to accept difference, his work can now disturb as much as intrigue, but I still feel that if you have not come across artists like him before, it is worthwhile doing some research on how and why they operated in the way they did.
Jonny Meah
The banner can be a sophisticated tool of the establishment or something used within a people's 'folk' tradition, and artists have responded to both ends of the spectrum.
Does form follow function?
I find it slightly disconcerting that the banner format has more lately been appropriated by my local art gallery, as well as other art galleries throughout the world. The hanging banner within an architectural setting is about the making of public messages and only those powerful enough to have access to and ownership of public buildings can usually use them.
However street protest also uses a banner format, some old formats such as the miners' banners, clearly themselves imitating earlier religious conventions.
The banner tradition continues, in particular it has become associated with feminist protest movements and because of the present political climate in the UK I would suggest that the banner will be making a comeback.
Contemporary UK street protest
Mark Wallanger has made work about these public displays of protest, his 'State Britain' installation, being a faithful reproduction of Brian Haw's own one man protest placards and banners.
Mark Wallanger: State Britain: 2007
Brian Haw
The Nordic Pavilion in Venice was hosting an exhibition entitled 'Weather Report: Forecasting futures'. It was an attempt to put together a group of artists that were concerned to work in a territory that used to be called science fiction or speculative fiction, therefore when framing an idea it had to evoke a certain futurity. Ane Graff presented an image of genetically modified wheat framed in such a way that it appeared to be emerging from some sort of isolation tank. The frame in this case now becoming an extension of the idea into the surrounding architecture.
Ane Graff: Nordic Pavilion Venice
Drawing a frame around something is a basic conceptual idea. It separates one thing from another.
By drawing a line around something we separate it out, the red circle around a word is in many ways very similar to the frame around an image. In the same way that the circle separates the word from its context within the sentence, a frame separates an image from its context within the wider world. As a concept it is a very powerful one, one that in mathematics is called set theory and as a way of illustrating certain aspects of set theory we have Venn diagrams. I could argue that all frames are in essence physical Venn diagrams and they help us think about how ideas can belong to the world or be a reflection on the world.
Thinking of frames within frames reminds me of what happened to the Venezuelan Pavilion this year. You could think of each pavilion in Venice as a type of frame, in the terms of the diagrams above each pavilion would be a disjoint set, separate from each other. (In mathematics, two sets are said to be disjoint sets if they have no element in common) Within each pavilion Set (A) there would be framed individual works. These would be subsets (B) of set (A). We normally don't think of the power of the pavilion as a frame, we simply walk through the entrance to get in to see the work on show. But because of economic and political unrest in Venezuela, on the opening of this year's biennale the Venezuelan Pavilion remained closed, the doors padlocked shut. Suddenly the focus of the art world was on the locked doors, in effect the framing (the pavilion) was now operating as the main carrier of meaning.
An intersection of politics, mathematics and art is something that often occurs, if only because they are three fundamental ways for human beings to make sense of the world. They are glued together within art as metaphor. See this earlier post.
A rambling post again but hopefully within the ramble there are some points of interest. Don't forget when visiting exhibitions to look at how the work is presented, you will have to present your own work in end of year shows, outside exhibitions and to a wide range of people via on line formats. each time presentation will be an issue, so he more you look at how other people are doing it and the more you consider the contextual implications of the various approaches to it, the better choices you will make.
Sometimes though framing is simply a physical job to do, this earlier post shows one way to make a frame: Framing a large drawing. The cutting and sawing and the thinking through how all the elements fit together involve a lot of basic geometry, a discipline that would have evolved out of physical actions that demanded a certain amount of precision, like planning for a building or deciding where boundaries are. Doing, always comes before theory.
A frame can also be part of the conceptual thinking about edge; see this post.
See also:
Framing
From drawing to installation
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