Intervention #3 (Firstdraft 07.07.10)

Firstdraft group show: Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe, Bronwyn Carter, Luke Thurgate & Baden Pailthorpe.

For this intervention I made 4 new original placards. I thought it was time to set aside Tom Glenn's images and use something of my own. The 4 placards read:

A written Idea

Photocopied

Pasted onto placards

Leant on the outside wall of Firstdraft

When imagining what to write on the sheets of paper before mounting, I began to think about what I was actually trying to achieve with these interventions. For the initial project at MOP I simply wanted to 'break in' to the show and see something of my own up with the exhibiting artists. For the second intervention at Peloton I wanted to start a dialogue between my placards and the ideas presented within the show.
But what to do about the third? This time around I was undecided on whether to prey on one of the artists inside the gallery, or to prey on the gallery itself.
I the end I decided that the action itself was enough of a concept to make the work about, so the final text just explained the intention of the work – to make it about the action.

I left the placards leaning upon the outside wall of the gallery where they where getting a fair response – people where coming outside to look at them. Or rather, they read them when they came outside to smoke.

I returned to the gallery after 9pm to see that one of the placards was broken, and lay on the ground. It had a footprint on it. I cannot tell whether somebody kicked the work to knock it over or whether it simply fell to the ground and was trodden on.

This has made me think about the works in a new way. Or rather, to think about the idea of gallery etiquette. I would like to imagine that somebody did not like the placards, and kicked them on purpose. This is interesting to me because it lead me to the thought that the gallery protects the work inside it - and if you see a show and it annoys you, you can't do anything about it as there are certain rules and manners people display. But the outside of those walls is different, and since the placards where seen as nobody’s property, it meant that the works could be interacted with as a response. It’s also likely that the damage done to the work was accidental – though this is still highly unlikely to happen to the legitimate works within the show.

My next task is display the placards in a way which is more intrusive and to document response to them – whether they are removed, ignored or looked at, and why this is the case.