Five Years gallery at Archway, London, provided space for a group show “This is Not What I Asked For” – an opportunity to give a critical backstage view of the process of art production. The installation “In Abeyance” used packaged art work as its main building blocks.
Flat-packed drawings, props and artefacts have been tightly placed together to form a composition, which in turn becomes a new work, as the putting it together was not chance but carefully planned. The installation reflects on the reality of living in a large city where, due to the lack of space, work that has been produced will need to be soon packed and put away to make room for new work.
It seeks out the qualities that art work has in between the shows, when it is not deployed, not worked on, not looked at, when it is waiting to be display, when it is in abeyance.
The work, seemingly static, has a number of contact microphones attached to it, which amplify the sound of any physical contact of the audience with the work, be it accidental or not. Resonating, deep sounds evoke the existence of the works outside their packaging and invite audience to interact with them further.
