The spaces between: artist and audience

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Session Title:
  • Location/Space (Papers)

Presentation Title:
  • The spaces between: artist and audience

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Abstract:

  • This presentation will provide a brief overview of projects curated and developed over the last ten years that create a space for dialogue between artists, audiences and the city. The Primavera exhibition curated for the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) in 2003 focussed on artists contemplating the relationship of media with public and private space. Whilst the gallery was the starting point for this, the works extended into public space with the aim of transforming the familiar into encapsulating and enigmatic experiences. This exhibition provided the artists with space to play and explore potential for both intimate and large‑scale audience engagement. This is an area I continue to pursue, the scale of interaction from the personal and individual to the larger shared community experience. How does media facilitate this, how do artists create the discreet introspective experience to the large scale and how is the response of the audience guided by the scale of the interaction? In particular I will focus on the work ‘Rider Spoke’, developed Blast Theory (UK) during my time there from 2007‑2012. ‘Rider Spoke’ is a work for cyclists, who ride alone through the streets of the city, with an earphone and microphone, listening to questions asked by the artists and recording their answers as they go. Over the duration of the work, the questions become more personal and the solo rider is taken deeper into the own personal journey as they traverse the streets of the city. My experience of working with Blast Theory was a deep engagement with media as a site for emotion, confession and connection. A work such as ‘Rider Spoke’ crosses the boundaries between artist and audience and brings the two together in a brief moment of intimacy and honesty on the anonymous streets of the modern city.

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