Conceptual Art in Britain 1964 – 1979, Tate Britain, London, June 2016
Reoluf Louw, Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges), 1967, approximatey 5,800 oranges on a light grey plastic ground sheet on wooden framework fixed to the foor, 1524 x 1667 x 1667mm. Image courtesy of Aspen Art Museum 2015 © Reolof Louw. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles.
With more text on the walls than images, the exhibition is strikingly black and white- long labels explaining each piece of work, old black and white photographs, and art that uses words instead of pictures. The initial impression is that of a reading room- instead of reading into the visual qualities, we must literally read sentence after sentence. Curated by Andrew Wilson and spanning across five rooms, the exhibition ‘spotlights a key development that fundamentally changed the nature of art.’ The brochure also states that ‘the exhibition spans a period of social and cultural changes, both nationally and internationally…’ Upon inspection, ‘international’ should be changed to ‘trans-Atlantic’ to be more specific, with a few artists as exceptions. All work in the show comes from Tate’s own collection and archive, and are reflected upon in the first wall text as such: ‘work by these artists were propositional, and used unstable materials. Artworks were ordered, not by space or volume, but by time. [… ]The art object was seen to be […] a model or even a trigger for social and political engagement. Reading rather than looking suggested a new form of self-criticism for art.’
The nature of the art works in the show lead to further explanations of the movement within the brochure, with invited or quoted writings exploring the definition of “conceptual art”. With so much text to consume, the time required to understand each artwork with the material provided took much longer than possibly necessary. But, again, the very fact of an artwork being conceptual often allows a presumption for accompanying written language attempting to make clear the artistic intention. With this in mind, perhaps a much smaller exhibition would have been more effective in retaining the visitor’s interest and allowing the final rooms to be given just as much attention as the first few.
‘New Frameworks’, ‘Art & Language’, ‘The New Art’, and ‘Action Practice’ were the divisions made between each of the gallery rooms, but the architectural layout allowed for three of the rooms to be viewed in various order sequences- however, with whichever route taken the exhibition was not disrupted or disjointed- each room simply reflected its title regardless of the ones it came before or after. This allowed for the audience to move more freely about the space and make associations of their own. There were roughly sixty items on display in the show, including vast amounts of archival material (magazines, catalogues, letters, photos, posters and press releases).
One art work which stood out from the density of material and text was Keith Arnatt’s 1971 Art as an Act of Refraction piece, consisting of eleven photographs and one text sheet. It is easy to understand the noticeability of this work as it was one of the only artworks with imagery rather than words. The row of images depicts the artist frame by frame putting a piece of paper with handwriting into his mouth. The series ends with the text reading: “Art as an Act of Retraction/ 1. ‘eleven’/ 2. ‘portraits’/ 3. ‘of’ / 4. ‘the’/ 5. ‘artist’/ 6. ‘about’ /7. ‘to’/ 8. ‘eat’/ 9. ‘his’/ 10. ‘own’ / 11. ‘words’.” The Tate website discusses the work in these terms:
“The tension here is between utterance and retraction – the eating of words made literal as the taking back of something already said; and yet Arnatt is not quite eating his own words but is ‘about to eat’ them. Using the figure of the artist as creator, art is retracted before it has perhaps been completed, putting the creative act into question.”
The reference to artwork being a spoken word is an example of the text panel’s explaining of conceptual art being ordered by time and fragile, fluid expressions rather than the physicality of objects.
Keith Arnatt, Art as an Act of Retraction, 1971, photographic print, 527 x 4398 x 31mm. . ©Keith Arnatt Estates/DACS London. Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles.
An artist whose work also raises questions of time and process is Reolof Louw, whose piece Soul City (1967) is kept in the first exhibition room under the umbrella of “The New Frameworks.” Consisting of 5800 oranges, the pyramid is intended to decrease in size as visitors are invited to take a piece of the sculpture away with them. Through audience participation, the art work changes form and identity, until only a few rolling oranges remain on the floor. South African born Louw is also one of the few artists who isn’t from the UK in the exhibition.
Questions were raised while visiting this show which weren’t discussed directly or thoroughly in any of the contextual material- questions of the relationship between concept and aesthetic, language and image, mind and material, theory and society. In term of my own research, curiosities such as these arose with regards to aesthetic philosophy- to what extent do the works in the exhibition need to exist physically at all if their prime subjects and messages reside through text/language as a way of communicating a single thought/concept? Does the concept become the aesthetic itself? Does conceptual art-idea art- presume to exist without needing to exist physically? Many of the works appeared to follow the display of minimal and monochromatic, perhaps this aesthetic is one presumed appropriate for work that exists mostly in the mind. Has something that requires so much explaining and additional material failed in its role as effective artwork?
Phoebe Rose Brown 