Guessing Games

Saturday 31^st July Reflecting on objects: an activity in three parts:

Part 1 Guessing Games

A small, green 1960s Antler suitcase lined with pink, watered satin bought from a Charity Shop for £1. Inside, a variety of mystery objects. Reach your hand in and pick one. Don’t think too much about which to pick, just take the first one your hand encounters. Take it out carefully so that no one else can see it and then look at it yourself, all the while keeping it hidden from others.

Next describe the object trying not to say what its function is (if it has one). What is it like? What shape is it? What colour? When someone guesses correctly place the object in the middle of the table until we have a collection.

Part 2 Relating to objects and to each other

Now, give your object to someone else who in turn gives theirs to another. Study your new object and think about something in your life it relates to. Then tell your story.

Part 3 Mini-installation

Place your story-object on the small, strange, two-tier metal trolley-on-a-lead that happens to be in the corner of the room. Everyone places their object until we have a mini-installation. We look at it, we discuss it. Look how the grain in the wood of the paintbrush handle echoes that of the lines on the curtain-rail finial. ‘Finial’? A word for the decorative end of a pole or banister for example. A new word I’d not heard before springing up from someone in the group.

Finally, we stand back and admire our new installation of objects, which have had an encounter with each other and with our lives as we have had with each other.

I could list the objects but to do so would not do them justice and it would spoil the games in case you are thinking of coming along to take part yourself.

But there is one I can name: a small, wooden Japanese Kokeshi doll. Next Sunday I will be bringing along more of my collection of Kokeshi and describing some of my mixed feelings about these strange and beautiful objects: Collectors’ Corner 2.30pm Sunday 8^th August.

Thanks to all those who took part last Saturday, it was all fun and enlightening.

Susan Diab

GAMES AND STORIES

My game set up by Eva.

I took a piece of my own work to the gallery on Sunday. It's a sort of game which first began in 2005 when I was exploring ideas about mapping and wayfinding. It started with the board. I was thinking about how blind people find their way around familiar places. I had been talking to blind friends about their strategies of counting paces; listening for changes in sounds; feeling changes in the air temperature, wind strength, the ground beneath their feet; all those things which sighted people don't think about most of the time. I used some tactile maps as references to mark out a trail on a big piece of board. That was the start of my game. I've added to it over the years and each time I set it up it's different. This week I brought it to the gallery to let other people decide how it should be set up.

Talking about how she decides on the way her installations will develop, Tomoko Takahashi has said that there is always a kind of story behind it - she sets up a background and starts imagining things. That was exactly what a little girl called Eva did with my game. Hers was a story of goodies and baddies and a great flood which the goodies had to escape from in boats which sailed across my board leaving a trail of markers for  people following on behind. Then they made a blockade to keep the baddies out of their area and set up (slightly wonky) red windmills to generate their electricity.

FLEAMARKET COMPOSITIONS

Above and below: photographs of objects at a fleamarket, Rachel Cohen.

 

Brighton based artist, Rachel Cohen, brought her collection of quirky photographs of objects displayed at fleamarkets to the De La Warr Pavilion this afternoon. The Collectors Corner presentation brought up questions regarding how we make decisions about ordering and organising things and the individuality of this process. Rachel told us how she had spent hours organising the photographs into an order which would "flow" for the slideshow, grouping the objects in the images by theme (such as religious icons), function (e.g.tools), shape or material. Then a second layer of organising was demonstrated within the pictures, this time not under Rachel's control, instead decided by the stall-holders themselves as they chose how to display the objects on their stalls, whether in chaotic heaps, colourful groups or ordered as rows or grids.

It was interesting to think about how Tomoko Takahashi decides how to position and "display" the objects in her installations and the "internal logic" which governs her decisions about the careful placement of individual items in her seemingly chaotic arrangements.

Rachel Cohen website

A month at a time

This Sunday was busy at the DLWP and it was great to see many people(of all ages) both at the exhibition and outside enjoying the sunshine. There was no time for swapping in the gallery today. The Pocillum was such a hit at Collectors Corner that we decided to keep the eggcups on display for most of the afternoon. Smalls -Murray, of Back Door Gallery had brought a variety of eggcups for viewing. These they had either found in junk shops and car boot sales or received through the post, donated by friends and members of the public throughout July 2008. The performance duo told us they always display the cups a month at a time and will never show the entire Collection as one exhibition. The Collection is ongoing and so far they have acquired around nine hundred items which are also stored in monthly groupings. Information about each cup is kept and discussed - every story becoming an integral part of the archive. Someone at Collector's Corner described a strange book shop in Liverpool where he was only allowed to see the books he requested, never the entire contents of the shop. However, there seems to be more than a need for control when curating The Pocillum; Smalls - Murray compared looking at the cups a month at a time to the pleasure to be had searching through one's loft and discovering forgotten treasures. "After all" they said, "Where's the fun to be had looking at a finished crossword?" And surely that's part of the pleasure everyone experiences when collecting? One of the audience suggested that they might feel too exposed were The Pocillum to be seen in total. They agreed; it is for them a very personal and private collection which they allow others to see (a bit). Gigi loved the show and talked about how she was moving from hoarder to minimalist. I asked what she attributed this to, age or necessity? She felt it was mix of both, but significantly as she grew older the need to define herself through her possessions had waned.

It was lovely talking with Marcia and her friend who wished to be known only as "Mystery Man". He seemed to be a collector of stories and vividly told us of an Irish woman he briefly knew over fifty years ago, described by Marcia as the 'love of his life'. Marcia didn't see the point of Takahashi's show. "I don't get it, it's not art, it's not beautiful, just a pile of rubbish. I've got that kind of stuff in my shed and people say to me 'why do you keep that — all those coat hangers you don't need?' " Mystery Man felt it needed a second look, that the work might be appreciated for its abstract qualities and we talked for a while about the eggcups. Suddenly, Marcia suggested she could make an installation with old 'useless' objects from her grandfather, father, etc and that would have meaning. "There you go!" her anonymous friend said.

Many thanks to Smalls - Murray for sharing The Pocillum, Judith Adler for the photo and everyone who took time to talk.

GALLERY INTERACTION SESSION SAT 24TH JULY

Another wonderfully engaging afternoon conducting the interactive session on Saturday. Again I worked mostly with smaller groups, 2s and 3s, families, and the ages ranged from 5 to retirees, so a wide range of ideas was canvassed! Using last week’s dice throwing game as a starting point for exploration of the value of objects and how that is decided proved rich territory for discussion at a personal level – and beyond – of some of the exhibition’s themes.

Themes that emerged from the activities included: functional creativity (thank you Keith for sharing the ideas from your thesis) as opposed to straightforward “artistic” creativity; the Lost Gardens of Heligon in Cornwall; the value of the utilitarian versus the aesthetic and the meeting grounds between the two; what things in a person’s life are irreplaceable – this was particularly interesting when related to Takahashi’s art, as people were intrigued as to how the larger installations were stored for future display, and if they exist only in photos and notes to be recreated then what is it that the artist has created, and where does its value lie?

Jude and Ahmed (who works in sculptural collage) were very interested in the difference between the interactive activities and the more formal curatorial notes. Ahmed wanted to know who came up with this interactive approach, “because it’s fantastic, a fantastic way of bridging the work” and said it had made him think differently about the exhibition – so well done, interactive team (and thank you Ahmed)!

Final quotable quotes of the afternoon came from Christopher (7) - “I thought it was weird but imaginative”; Isabel (12) who said “from a distance it just looks like junk but when you get up close you can see how carefully it’s all been placed”; Will (5) who said it was “all great”, Jonathan (10) who said of Clockwork, “It doesn’t look like art but it feels like art.” Which was a brilliant summing up to a thoroughly engaging afternoon. Thanks to all who took time out to talk to me.

Embracing the installation

We had predicted that there may be some resistance to Tomoko Takahashi's exhibition here at the DLWP but it does not appear to have materialized. We underestimated the receptiveness of our audience. After the intial shock of encountering what looks like a pile of rubbish in Gallery 1 people are really appreciating the meticulous nature of the installation. There's an element of nostalgia in the work as well - almost everyone recognizes an object that they have owned or known at some point in their lives and this gives them a way into understanding Tomoko's approach. The objects contained within the 'Clockwork' installation are from the domestic world but perhaps the 'hidden' domestic world of sheds and undersink cupboards. I think that because these objects have been forgotten they are imbued with a life of their own. Tomoko loves this and communicates this enjoyment to us all through her art.

Oh - and we've had 20,000 visitors so far!

18/07/10 Bern O'Donoghue

Today Collector's Corner was fortunate to have Geoff Dudman and his display of beautiful oriental rugs and bags at the rear end of the gallery. There was a steady stream of visitors and it was difficult not to stroke the carpets admiringly as he shared his knowledge of their tribal significance, along with impact that the political history of the area has had on their production and survival. People were also interested in more practical issues such as who made the rugs, how they were used, dyeing techniques and the meanings of motifs and patterns. Several people shared their own stories about rugs or textiles they owned, including one visitor who had seen hers being made in India by a young boy under the tutelage of his grandfather. The old man remembered the pattern and passed on the skills entirely word of mouth, much as Geoff described the skills being passed on by the women of the Baluchi.


The exhibition has made me take stock and think about why I personally keep so much stuff, some of it long after it has served its purpose. I wanted to explore if and why other people do this, so took in wrapped 'useless' objects from my studio to exchange with willing visitors. I saw Jill and her husband looking at Desk Top Garden Culture as I was setting up. They confessed that they also found it difficult to decide when to throw things away. When asked if they had a garden shed in which to hide clutter, they said that their garage served that function, so much so there was no room for the car. Jill regretted not keeping some music memorabilia from her youth as it would now be worth a great deal of money, while her husband and I mused on the difficulty in discarding possessions He felt that he was editing himself when he threw things away and that maybe another person needs to do it for him, as they would be less affected by an objects history or emotional attachment. Before moving on he told me: "Things that outlive their usefulness don't outlive their usefulness" citing the example of letters he keeps which his parents sent to each other when they first met.



When Frankie opened one of the brown paper parcels and discovered a pretty ink well (which was a gift from a friend now living in New Zealand) she was surprised it was to be given away. Though a lovely to look at, it is impractical and so I want to pass it on. Frankie suggested that it might serve as a keepsake. We talked about keeping things to remind us of our friends, but how sometimes although they are a reminder, when we still don't keep in touch, the object then becomes loaded with guilt and getting rid of it impossible.


Simon from Brighton found a cup and saucer which I had reluctantly housed because the previous owner found it too difficult to give to the charity shop; a remnant from a deceased parent's house. S imon felt compelled to give it a home because he found the story so touching, although having picked it up in the exhibition, he saw a change in function from cup to a piece of art. Simon described himself as collector of several things and has recently been buying toys he played with as a child. He saw this as 'collecting his own past' though he could never get as close as he wished. It felt like he was only able to catch an echo. He wondered what might happen if he managed to buy the very last toy on his list — would he drop dead?


Eerika looked a little disappointed with the nearly dried up tubes of paint she had chosen and confessed that she also hoards things because it seems wrong to throw them in the bin. This she puts down to the influence of her grandmother, whose wartime experiences make it very difficult to throw away containers or small scraps, just in case they prove useful. I took pity on her and offered to throw them in the bin on my way home.

Many thanks to Geoff and Sue Dudman and all those who took the time to talk.