Miriam Craik-Horan To: Claire Nichols
ELEVEN
6 messages

 

Miriam Craik-Horan        Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 12:09 PM

To: Claire Nichols

I couldn’t care to imagine how many of them arrived. How many do you imagine will exist when the take-down is imminent?

 

 

 

Claire Nichols    Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 7:53 PM

To: miriam craik-horan

There of course could, and probably will be, more. But, somehow I find it impossible to imagine the show any differently from how it was when we saw it that first Saturday in June. The works and their positions are ingrained in my memory as a polished background image to our conversation in the gallery. This ‘finish’ makes me think about the general practice of going to see a show - the event / time-based questions that come up in conversation, such as ‘did you see the bit when / with ...?’ - I think most of us will go and see a show only once, just like we might do a round-the-world trip once in our lifetime, travelling through most countries we have selected only once. The repeat visit is reserved for the countries/shows we really have an affinity with, the ones we maybe locate a bit of ourselves in.

 

-- so the process of addition in “Free Show” interests me, do you think it seeks a before and after viewing?

 

..Imagining what the show might look like just before take-down is, for me, a bit like imagining what someone I remember, but met only once about ten years ago, might look like now..

 

 

 

Miriam Craik-Horan        Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 10:55 AM

To: Claire Nichols

Imagine she has been away.

 

When she returned there was an accumulative heaviness. Weather forecasters would cite the language of snow. Upon returning - and entering a place snowed in, covered, concealed and worked  - I am aware that the ‘before’ and ‘after’ one of us speaks of is imbued with a kind of dissolution in between. The echoiness of a shy voice amid an assembly hall at school falls upon ears only just as tepid. And what of the louder, brasher children? Who are their friends to be?

 

 

Claire Nichols    Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 8:35 PM

To: miriam craik-horan

One on top of the other: in this case a gesture so polite as to be as logical as: one after another.

 

The brash attention-seeker usually thinks of themself as a comedian, playing on and against a very human resounding board. It’s the steam of one man pushing everyman too far. The logic of their humour is combustion through assimilation, and heirs and graces form part of their spell around the cauldron. What do you think will happen to the relationship of part to whole when work is taken down, one after another? what of the authors who are witnessed removing, and the traces that they leave?

 

 

 

Miriam Craik-Horan        Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:05 AM

To: Claire Nichols

 

In the hall, with drink. A pear cider in, because its out here not in five years.

 

But in five years, I imagine, coming in from out here and seeing the stench of fresh -not altruistic fruits- labours, not alcholic. In hand is a cup for milling the ceremonial space. Take to mouth, privately, in public view. Putting one hand on top of the other (one is yours), around the cup and outside it space falls.

 

On the floor, in five years, large sticky letters from a slip of mouth. A large letter, probably a consonant, takes with it confectionary wallpaper and breaks authorship bread with a curl in its thin lips. They were not to be touched, but made to be. And so the joke goes, and falls on hobbyhorse ears as she rocks. Everywhere she rocks the same ballad, then still under an arm above a pair of legs in blue jeans.

 

Pear cider, and only a bottle of it. Small part of a whole tree, but more than a whole pear, a part. So, washing my five years cup hand in Pears soap (plural pear, no part fruit) the logic of the relationship of part to whole is disgraced by the nature of my cup. When we talked in the space, rotating like a mill, we contained and defined the fragility of that relationship between the parts. When hands enter back into five years to reclaim and undo, objects start to open into cups when the objects are made impartial to human evaluation. Nice jeans.

 

 

 

 

Claire Nichols    Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:06 PM

To: miriam craik-horan

* I imagine that, as a viewer, sharing sight of the take-down process may be a particularly self-conscious, and perhaps embarrassing, moment. The intentions and the bodies of the viewer and the artist occupy five years simultaneously, misaligned.

 

Regular exhibition procedures cultivate the upright, polite and expectant viewer-body, and take-down is usually conducted in the privacy of the closed gallery, by the artist or gallerist, dutifully. The first act self-consciously politicises the gaze with respectful distance, whereas the second act mirrors the viewer-body’s perfunctory parade out of the door, at close of play.

 

At the point the artist is witnessed in the process of removal, the window is conveniently placed for a sideways gaze. View to an outside or an awareness of an inside, with or without air, it is a reliable dynamic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.09.08.........Umm… uh… (pause) (laughs) (laughter)

The idea of a Free Show… umm… was simple. Simple enough. The instructions explain what needs to be understood. Practically. Participation is free. Free to all. Regardless. There are of course rules. But. And crucially here, the gesture is towards consent. Perhaps this won’t work. Allowing others what amounts to clause protection. Ourselves and our work. From what? From certain discussion made between participants. Predictably the show becomes an opportunity to show work without censure… arbitration… that is without someone saying the work is not good enough. This is never said by the artists… Bringing work for show. Indeterminate. Sentence. The length of which depends on the prisoners conduct. Uncertain and also contingent. Possible happening by chance or unforeseen causes. Unpredictable… intended for use in circumstances not completely… foreseen. Dependent on… or conditioned by something else… not necessitated… determined by free choice… demands from each artist a certain responsibility. A relinquishing of… consent. In what sense? Do they work willingly? We work willingly… are happy enough to respond within the rules. We are never asked to provide good work. Chance. Relies on trust… a trust in the overall… construction… system… proves problematic… To have a system, this is fatal for the mind writes Schlegel, Not to have one, this too is fatal. Whence the necessity to observe, while abandoning, the two requirements at once. No one says a bad word to the face. And what isn’t working well… what skips along… content with… blustering embarrassment… in mediocrity… sits awkwardly akin… paradoxically… to the way we strive to do wrong… you know the form… the manner… those group shows… Yes, yes that really works… or… it needs to somehow look wrong… Of course there is wrong proper. It’s very difficult. And you can’t be sure… whether you have done the right thing. Yes the question is if you would like to be sure. But the show cannot be ignored. (laughter) For those who pick up and read it’s little calling card… a refusal to participate is an act of… recognition. Je est un autre… Etc. I see only from one point, but in my existence I am looked at from all sides. So things in the end may be divided. Split. Etc. Those who see the invitation. And those who don’t concern themselves… refusing… somehow… boredom… through tired abject weariness… indifference… perhaps the gallery is too… the horrible probability of showing next to… powerless to defend against… poisoned by… too much… too unprofessional… too troublesome… too inappropriate… context all wrong… properly wrong. Or others who… confessed… who came with every intention … and then left without… There can or will be no proper permission given for participation. This is all to the idea. We have to accept that free defined in this way forces us… jeopardizes personal taste. Contingency. (laughs) The point. Not everyone copes. And there were those who willingly… participated… Fought to get in early before the space was filled up. Brought whatever they could to give a bit of a show to their talents… sorry… Our… talents… Fitted into the space left by others. Saying how happy they were. No one really wanted to move anybody else’s work even though most didn’t mind their work being moved. Altering and changing other’s work seemed very much out of limits. Even for those who specified that they were happy to have their work altered. Working in the space over time… over and above the time taken to place (nail, screw, glue) for those who stayed for the day… painting, cutting out paper…  developing conversational messages… from one weekend to the other… or allowing the recording of one performance to underscore future events. Imagining the viewer. Passing by chance. In the end everyone returned to remove their work in full view. As with the above… to be recorded. We accept the fact. That promises of whole-hearted, thrilled interest will be and are reneged… And that the removal of work in person… during show time… offers one last chance to be caught… captured in the field of vision… In the sight of… if not one’s parents. Claire Nichols concludes her piece for Free Show writing to Miriam Craik-Horan:

I imagine that, as a viewer, sharing sight of the take-down process may be a particularly self-conscious, and perhaps embarrassing, moment. The intentions and the bodies of the viewer and the artist occupy five years simultaneously, misaligned.

Regular exhibition procedures cultivate the upright, polite and expectant viewer-body, and take-down is usually conducted in the privacy of the closed gallery, by the artist or gallerist, dutifully. The first act self-consciously polticises the gaze with respectful distance, whereas the second act mirrors the viewer-body’s perfunctory parade out of the door, at close of play.

At the point the artist is witnessed in the process of removal, the window is conveniently placed for a sideways gaze. View to an outside or an awareness of an inside, with or without air, it is a reliable dynamic.

You know what artists are like. Permission must to be sought. Friendship… Comradeship… Individualism. Autrui. Circumstances dictate. Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie)

Edward Dorrian

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