Art & Language
Now They Are Surrounded, Reconfigured
Opening view: Friday 26th October 2007, 6 - 8pm
20 October to 17 November 2007
‘Hoc Opus hic labor est’ 1
The work Now They Are Surrounded consists of 144 canvases each measuring 26cm x 31cm . On the surface of each canvas is depicted a page of text that has been torn or cut in some way and then repaired with rather mangy Sellotape. In other words, the work consists of 144 pictures.
The work Now They Are Surrounded was first exhibited at the Guildhall Art Gallery, 2005, and had been made specifically for that occasion. The framed canvasses were distributed around the gallery singly or in groups. In many cases they might easily have been taken for information about the paintings they adjoin. On another occasion Now They Are Surrounded was installed as the gridded occupant of a single wall at ZKM Karlruhe. The gridded block, 8 frames high and 18 wide at ZKM occupied roughly the same amount of space as a very large modernist painting. The whole measured just over 2.5m x 5m, roughly the same dimensions as Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis.On this occasion the work is displayed in another configuration: in sequential order as two horizontal rows going around Unit 2 Gallery. Also for this exhibition, the 144 framed pictures have been scanned and configured as an interactive projection that can be reconfigured in a number of ways as rows, horizontal and vertical, and as grids, to demonstrate the possible legion permutations. 2
In producing the work, Art & Language kept two thematic questions in
view:
2) Would a change in the circumstances in which the work was exhibited change its internal description?
The exhibition is offered as an essay-like contribution with regard to a Symposium, ‘Systems Art’, organised jointly with London Metropolitan University, Whitechapel Art Gallery, and The National College of Art and Design Dublin 26th and 27th October 2007. 3
1 ‘Only the Overcoming of difficulties makes a work significant:
hoc opus hic Labor est’
Luhmann.2000 N, Art As A Social System, Translated
by Eva M. Knodt, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, p 315
2 Annie Spinster and Chris Smith, from, Now They Are Surrounded Art & Language 2005. 2007
3 Nicolas Luhmann makes particular reference to Art & Language in Art as a Social System: op cit, p295
Artist: Art & Language
Exhibition: NOW THEY ARE SURROUNDED: RECONFIGURED
Opening Times: Tuesday - Friday 12-6pm and Saturday 1-6pm
Admission: Free
Private View: Friday 26th October 2007, 6 - 8pm
Exhibition: 20 October to 17 November 2007
