Elizabeth Allen-Smith
Elizabeth Allen-Smith
Post-Distance
#Painting #Sculpture
Exhibition /ɛksɪˈbɪʃ(ə)n/ (n) a public display of works of art or items of interest, held in an art gallery or museum.
Exposition /ɛkspəˈzɪʃ(ə)n/ (n) a setting forth of the meaning or purpose (as of a writing). (n)discourse designed to convey information or explain what is difficult to understand.
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As I neared the completion of my PhD journey, I began to consider what shape my viva exhibition might take. The prevailing issue of Covid 19 and its continuing impact on exhibition-making was important here; the opportunity for traditional exhibition was potentially taken away for the time being at least, and as in so many areas of our lives, ‘new’ ways of doing needed to be explored. The concept of the ‘exhibition’ unwittingly became a site of necessary experimentation and change; I concluded that the viva exhibition should present an exposition of my process, documenting the journey of experimentation and the methodologies employed therein.
Exposition is an introduction. Exposition need not tell what something is; rather, it can set the ground for a play to follow, which can be open-ended and need not be concluded…
Although introduction suggests discursiveness, what is meant here is not so much explanation but a willingness to share materials and modes of thinking and doing.
Schwab & Bergdorff, 2015
This articulation of what ‘exposition’ is, contributes to my argument regarding the re/positioning of process in contemporary painting practice. It can indeed bring about a paradigm shift in how painting is fundamentally encountered and experienced. By sharing these modes of making and knowledge production the ‘inner world’ of painting can become more readily accessible to the audience. I put forward that the notion of exposition, in the context of the viva presentation, occupies a liminal space; it sits between process as practice and exhibition. The viva-exhibition functions as a ‘space of exchange’, better positioned to enable a sharing and understanding of material thinking, methods, and knowledges.
Here, in this virtual space, the outcomes of experimentation are displayed and viewed as in an exhibition, but here they are to be understood as functioning as an exposition of epistemic things; in a continuing process of evolving and revealing, they reflect a material moment in time, the beginnings of presencing.
Sally Bailey’s PhD research aims to define and locate a ‘space of exchange’ within the painting process and articulate the ways in which this phenomenon plays a pivotal role in the often-backgrounded transformation of both process and painter. I present a re-imagining of the concepts of liminality and alchemy in relation to the painting process, as underpinned by the interfaces existing and emerging between painting/painter/Painting (as process/subject/object). Through experimentation, intervention, collaboration, […]
