Museum Construct
What is a museum? Are artists who collect and curate/ represent things creating mini museums. Are our personal spaces identity museums?
What is worthy of being in a museum?
What is worthy of looking at?
How do museums present things? How do we choose to catalogue objects and why?
How do museums function?
Being in a museum gives objects a sense of value and importance. People are stood guarding it, so it must be precious right. People pay to see this stuff and they have a little plaque telling us all about it. Maybe there's a print of a photograph of this object on a tea towel in the gift shop.
Are museums healthy? Museum culture is undeniably institutionally racist and sexist and pro criminal/ pro empire/war looting; a lot of artifacts on display belong to other cultures and were stilen during mikitary occupation. There are curators trying to challenge this toxicity but it sounds like an uphill struggle. Lived history is an important conversation in general and in the museum world at the moment. Who's story is being told? Who is telling their story? And who do we believe?
We all create our own personal museums. All our belongings are a collective museum, an autobiographical collection of artifacts that we constantly evolve and curate, informed by our life's journey. What do we keep and what do we discard. Why? How do we catalogue this treasure, this proof of our existence?
We sometimes go to museums as tourists, but this can mean we aren't really looking. It's often a busy, loud and purpose driven space. This looking but not being present can mean that you aren't really engaging with the pieces there. What is the difference between looking and experiencing/ engaging?
Irwin Live looks at that idea in this installation.
Art is a cultural experience. Often people who don't make art often go to see art and this is an interesting occurrence. It is kind of singular in fact.
The American artist Mike Kelley takes found objects and presents them in a classification way. Like biological specimens. Playing with classification is an interesting idea, it creates a different narrative for the objects on display. It is almost forensic.
Magdalena Jetalovak played with space in this installation that spilled over and dominates the museum. Like the sands of time spilling from a giant hour glass. The space has the sense of being reclaimed by the elements, like the sea and the desert reclaims parts of the earth. It makes us think about what is lasting? What will be left in 1000 years? What is permanent? Do things need to have permanency to have value?
Paul McCarthys video 'The Painter' is dealing with the construct of what it is to be a struggling artist and the life of struggling and suffering they are meant to have. Exploring the trope of is suffering good for you? Suffering and redemption. How do we expect people to behave? How do we try to meaning make and understand stuff to reconcile our existential angst.
Mark Manders explores the idea of crating and packaging. We take great care of things of value. Or do we? Valuable how? To who? Why? Does something have excessive hysterical packaging make it valuable? How do we present artefacts/ art?
