Now It's In Your Hands
Now it's in Your Hands is composed of three participatory stacks. Each stack is composed with different subject matter. Each of the prints are hand signed and numbed. This work was exhibited at The Walls Artspace on Miami, Gold Coast.
Participants were welcome to take as many prints as they wished, with the ideal being that there would be no work remaining. Due to COVID-19 closing this show early none of the stacks met this desire. The work aimed to highlight the fragility of the value we place on art and how we percieve art itself. Placed in a stack and being allowed to participate the work was subsequently strewn about with participants flicking through the images to choose the one they desired the most. This became more evident in the works which displayed the greater differences between stacks, mostly stack two. The third stack which visibly showed the least amount of variation and also the biggest stack was the least participated with.
Normally, attendees of an art gallery are unable to touch the art, let alone take it home. By allowing art-goers to do both, this work subverted the social norms of the art space and disobeyed the preciousness of the art object. This work relied on key indicators of an art object with the placement of the stacks onto a plinth, the stock of the paper, the individual numbering and of course, the artists signature.
As each of the participants engaged with the work they altered it for those around them creating a unique and special experience for everyone who interacted with this work after them or around them.
The first stack features 35 5x5inch photographs depicting a self portrait of the artist. Each photo represents a singular frame of a hot summers day, the photos never reveal the face in full. As the stack descends the images get blurry and blend into each other. The photographs are the result of a singular moving image sequence.
The second stack is composed of 30 one-shot photographs taken completely at random. This stack was an exercise on randomness, variation and limited editions. As this work featured the most variation participants were able to engage in this work and spend more time flicking through the images. As each print is completely different once someone takes it away there is no more reference to that image, creating an even further unique art experience.
The third stack consisted of 47 frames of a video sequence of digitally manipulated paint. This work featured almost identical images that varied only slightly and was the largest pile on the biggest plinth. Out of all the stacks this stack featured work that 'looked' the coolest and created less a conversation about choice.
