Last Wednesday I attended my first Site Specific Performance session at The Collection Museum and Usher Gallery. We explored the facilities and individually conducted small tasks which pushed us to think about the area as a performance space, as well as its purpose in society. At first I found my task difficult as even though I understand what a museum’s purpose is I had never thought about the effect of its role and its significance in society in depth before. My task asked me to:
“Choose one item in either collection and imagine it transported to today’s world. What would you have it say?”
There were two items that attracted me most, the Grandfather clocks in the gallery and the Victorian mourning jewelry which were situated next to them. I used the mourning jewelry for my task. My initial thoughts about their situation was that it was ironic in that they represent death yet the clocks represent time, and in my own opinion how time is never ending.
We were introduced to the facilities and the Viewpoint Exhibition which we are now a part of. The idea of the exhibition is to explore and provoke the opinions of the viewers by making them question “what is art?” The idea of questioning art in itself is interesting to me as it has made myself question what I classify as artwork, or whether I classify artwork at all. I expect that this exhibition will continue to make me question my own views on art, as well as enable me to create a performance that questions the viewer’s perception of the museum, gallery and art in general.

References

MoMA.org, (2015). Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory (1931). [online] Available at: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79018 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2015].

Thecollectionmuseum.com, (2015). Viewpoints | The Collection. [online] Available at: http://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/?/exhibitions-and-events/view/viewpoints [Accessed 2 Feb. 2015].