Clarke, Experimenting and 2 Locks

Leroy Clary has created a home to display his works, and in that endeavor, an interesting combination of conventional and artistic exhibition. I was able to witness this during a trip to both his house/museum in St. Ann, and in his studio/home spaces in Aripo. With this experience in the back of my mind, I turned to Boris Groys’ “Politics of Installation.”

Groys insists that “the installation transforms the empty, neutral, public space into an individual artwork—and it invites the visitor to experience this space as the holistic, totalizing space of an artwork. Anything included in such a space becomes a part of the artwork simply because it is placed inside this space.” Furthermore, “what becomes crucial is the distinction between a marked, installation space and unmarked, public space.”

However, previously, Groys also states that “the only function of such a [public] space is to make the art objects that are placed within it easily accessible to the gaze of the visitors.”

In this way, Clarke’s house, with the ambiguity of private and public, yet acutely contrived as an exhibition space with an emphasis on a workable living arrangement was unlike anything I have ever witnessed, as it combined Groys’ two concepts.

And I found it unnerving. How could one live within a tribute to one’s life’s works? Does doing that fatalistically determine the end of a career? Is it a certain type of pragmatism that allows for an artist to collect and create their own masterful tribute to their life’s dream?

These thoughts, and more around my own artwork, claimed my weekend.

In Groys’ work, I also made reference to my own body of work around the concept of “security.” Groys states that “art’s function is… to make visible the realities that are generally overlooked.” This reason, beyond my own convictions surrounding freedom and security substantiated my near obsessive concentration around boundaries, borders and security, and their physical manifestations of locks, gates, walls, shrubbery, windows and doors, gives more substance to my experimentations planned for this weekend.

As previously discussed, I am going far and beyond my own areas of passable expertise to create an experimental performance/project based on my thoughts surrounding my introspection around security. As the days draw nearer, I am reaching out to some artists that are currently working in Trinidad for some semblance of guidance and transference of advice. However, most of my invitations to these artists have been after weeks of no contact following a single meeting, or out of the blue with a quick mention of my connection to Christopher Cozier.

Due to this, and my relative inexperience, I don’t know what to expect of my experience for this performance/project. I still need to purchase fabric, though I think I’ve procured enough paint via the scavenging of Jeankia’s Program House Project.

What I don’t have is the upmost confidence in my ‘vision,’ which I am not currently viewing as destructive, but rather as constructive. If I don’t have a very clear idea of my end results, I can’t go wrong!

What I’m hoping to get is a rudimentary portrayal of my feelings surrounding security, and great big learning experience!

The final showing will be on May 12^th at Alice Yard, in Woodbrook. Come one, come all.

And before then, help this neophyte out in any way you can imagine! Maybe, you’d like to help by providing insight to iMovie. I’ve created my first, very simple video on iMovie, called 2 Locks, which I’ve posted HERE. I’ve got the (VERY) basic skills to make the video! Now it’s a matter of (time permitting) practice and dedication, and YOU!