Possible Monuments
at THE LOMBARD METHOD
Private view: Friday 28th May 6-9pm
For Possible Monuments, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau will present a one day exhibition at The Lombard Method consisting of proposals and maquettes for commemorative sculptures, as well as a video installation examining the role of sculpture in the public realm.
The proposals include a Monument to Sir Cliff Richard’s Eternal Flame (Pissing Fire) and a Maquette for a Monument to the Travellers who Stole a Henry Moore Sculpture and Melted it Down and Sold it For Scrap. The video installation uses videos and a spoken narrative to explore questions such as; why is there a Frank Zappa sculpture in Vilnius, Lithuania? And why does the Cerne Giant in Dorset have such an enormous erection?
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Actually, the video installation probably won't explore those questions, but it's a bit late to change it now. Hopefully no one will read the press release too closely.
The work I've been doing over the past week and a half is very different from the work I had planned to do. I had envisaged a lot of large detritus sculptures, displayed alongside drawings of hypothetical objects, and then a short performance lecture on the problems of scale. Instead of that I have focused exclusively on public sculpture and monuments. The lecture has become a video installation and the sculptures have become cardboard maquettes.
On my first night at the Lombard I gave a short presentation on my previous work, and then tried to explain the general themes of the residency. We ended up exchanging stories of the worst public sculpture we had seen, with everyone giving me local examples that I could look up. I'm not sure how conversation turned to public sculpture. I suppose I must have used it as an example of the problems of scaling up work, and then the example became much more meaningful than the more abstract idea that it was meant to illustrate.
I'm glad I found a specific theme, I'm not very good with generalities. I do enjoy grappling with the slippery ghost of abstraction, but I find that there is more humour and certainly more humanity in the soft, dusty skin of specific events and objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
Good word that.
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So today I might take a walk through the city, taking the photos for the video, buy a cheap fan to blow a single balloon around the installation, put together my cardboard bus and perhaps make it a shelf to sit on.
Then tonight we are going to Ikon to see the new Xu Zhen exhibition in which he impersonates a fictional group of artists from the Middle East. What interests me is the void at the centre of that work, the emptiness at the heart of every fictional context. Not only because of the possibilities of what could fill such a vacuum, but also because it allows me to shamelessly plug the show I have curated, {Empty Sets}, that is still running at Waterside Projects in London. In fact, there is an Artists in Conversation event that I am chairing on Sunday at 3pm. How convenient.