Art & Audience

Late last year I was part of a group show at Firstdraft Gallery called Obliteration. The premise of the show was

to explore the physical and emotional continuum created through loss of self. The works exhibited are situated between self and non-self, dissolving boundaries between artist, audience and curator.

The work I showed was called Collective Heights and at the opening was simply a line drawn on the wall marking my height with my name written next to it and a sharpie hanging on a piece of string. The audience then added themselves to the chart completing the work. The intention was to explore the show's premise of obliteration of the self by creating a work in which the audience's participation completes the work as a whole, but also completely overwhelms the mark-making gesture of the artist.

Collective Heights 2008 (installation view)

Collective Heights 2008

Photographs courtesy Beatrix Curren