It is probably appropriate that one of my strongest memories of the Conceptual Art exhibition is the smell of oranges. This review is as much an account of my process as it is a reflection on the exhibition itself.
The small accordion catalogue provided for the exhibition states that:
Conceptual art is about ideas or concepts. It is not about objects and materials…It undermines the traditional view of art as something to be looked at and admired.
This provides my first dilemma of the visit – here we are in one of, if not the, foremost art institution in the country viewing this work in a traditional white box with its incumbent hushed tones and uniformed (at least that is what I recollect) invigilators. This contradiction hits home when those that are investigating Roelof Louw’s ‘Soul City’ (Pyramid of Oranges, 1967) disintegrating tower of oranges (visitors are encouraged to take one fruit each) are told they are not to move the fruit about they must simply take one. As I move towards the second room I smell the scent of a freshly peeled orange, the impudent visitor is then told she cannot eat the fruit in the gallery.
My understanding is that conceptual art was born out of a reaction to modernism so there is something contradictory for me in the fact it is now displayed as a body of work on gallery walls and plinths. Although I suspect some of the artists may have enjoyed the irony.
It is not at all clear where the boundaries of ‘conceptual art’ are to be drawn, which artists and which works to include. Looked at in one way, conceptual art gets to be like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, dissolving away until nothing is left but a grin: a handful of works made over a few short years by a small number of artists… Then again, regarded under a different aspect, conceptual art can seem like nothing less than the hinge around which the past turned into the present. (Wood, 2002: 6)
I appreciate conceptual art can be a bit ‘marmite’, I knew of some the artists and was well disposed to seeing their work but I appreciate that this is not the case for everyone. In many ways it seemed like exquisite timing that this exhibition should come up just as I finished Context and Narrative and move into Graphic Design One. My own work has certainly become more conceptual and I am attracted to issues of art’s socio-cultural and economic role.
As the ‘performance’ elements of our visit played on there was some confusion as to whether we were allowed to take photographs or not so I decided to make sketches in my notebook, more as an aide memoire than representations. This served to slow down my visit and possibly helped me engage more with the work that I might have done otherwise.
On a socio-historical note I did find it depressing that some of the issues raised by the works seem to have changed so little, or have morphed into their equivalents for the early 21st Century.
This is a very dense show that to my mind warrants spending significant time, it is not for everyone but for me it has prompted a lot of questions that could relate both to my photography and my current Graphic Design module. As I understand it one of the cornerstones of conceptual art is the move away from beauty into provocation and making the viewer think, well the show certainly did that for me.
Given its slippery nature it also seems to be an odd endeavour to write about conceptual art.
References and Citations
Wood, P. (2002). Conceptual Art (Movements in Modern Art). New York, USA: Delano Greenidge Editions.
