Untitled
Installation | University of Stellenbosch Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa, June 2001
Materials: mixed media installation (stretched canvases, engraved Perspex, clock mechanisms, vinyl, fluorescent light & collected objects
Dimensions: variable
This exhibition was created as a site-specific installation responding to the past functions of the space as originally a Lutheran church and currently functioning as an art gallery linked to the University of Stellenbosch Museum. In my investigations I researched the past twelve years of the Gallery visitors’ books, gathering my own data of what the most common entries were and forming a top-12 statistic list. Also while reading, I copied unusual entries that somehow commented on the space of the gallery as museum, church or space of art. These records were then reworked within the installation and set in relation to the official records the gallery keeps (counting the visitors to the gallery in order to substantiate their funding) and to personal items of my own that went into the making of the exhibition (listed and housed in a separate room in a museum case). There were six canvas/clock pieces that I constructed which formed a ‘compass’ of orientation within the gallery paired each with vinyl maps in white on the walls and six ‘cross staff’ sculptures hand engraved with entries taken from the visitors books. The installation formed a personal response and disruption of the role of information systems within public structures to both orientate and disorientate the visitor.
