Interactive installation in association
with a series of interactive or participatory works (series called Sites of
Construction) exploring the iconography and cultural meanings attributed to
the ‘grid’.
Sites of Construction used
a multiplicity of media to explore the iconography of the grid and its usage throughout the last
two centuries as a tool for measurement, mapping and the construction of difference. The work
consisted of 3 ‘sites’, the cultural body; the audience in relation to their agency through
games and the spatial location of work within the gallery. Sites of
construction consists of 3 video works with a fourth image projected onto the
floor. In each the structure of the grid is perceivable, whilst also being disrupted or
corrupted through the insertion of a body into the projected frame of the grid. The resulting
images transform the power of the grid as a tool of control to a seemingly abstract series of
moving gestures, shapes and lines.
Artist quote:
"Forms of interactivity and the incorporation of responses from an audience
have been a strong continuum in my work. The audience as a force for change; the questioning of
hierarchies of sight over experience, in the ‘reading’ and interpretation of work; the
transformation of sites into mechanisms for examining layers of socialisation, constitute the
basic underlying motivations in my work."
"Sites of Construction actively sought
responses from its audience. The incorporation of physical interaction within the pieces allowed
for elements of change and the creation of a space through which the participant/viewer was able
to master their own narrative. The work also attempted to undermine the monopoly of sight in the
interpretation and experience of 'reading' art works. Interactive installation offered the
possibility of non-linear narratives that included and recorded the dialogue between myself, the
work, and those who actively or passively became part of the work. It also attempted to
reference the viewer as an agency for change and raised the question of how people wittingly or
unwittingly perpetuate ideologies." Artist quote from Sites of
Construction catalogue, 1995.
Sites of Construction: Floor game:
rubic cube, body.
Commissioned and first shown by Towner Art Gallery and Local
Museum, Eastbourne.
Stills from Sites of Construction: Rubix Cube
