seven walks

2. Identify the main points I want to convey.

What is it I’m trying to say?

Let’s start with the project brief:

…select one display context that relates to your own practice and analyse how the work is presented in this environment…

…It is important that you critically engage with both physical and conceptual exhibition strategies and explore how the ‘support mechanisms’ may affect the content or look of the work.

How has the work been installed in the space?

What kind of space is the work located in?

How does the audience engage with the work?

How does the work relate to other work in the space?

OK, we’re on track so what are my points going to be?

What exhibition did I choose?

Seven Walks

Francy Alÿs
28 September – 20 November 2005
21 Portman Square, London W1 and the National Portrait Gallery, London WC2

How does it relate to my practice?

I specifically chose to vist this exhibition because I wanted to look at how people went about documenting and presenting work that wasn’t really there.

erm, what I mean is work that is a doing or a happening – something that only really exists outside the temporal framework of the exhibition and doesn’t have an obvious output object like a sculpture. How do you communicate that? How do you prove it happened? How do you describe the process? How so you give it the status of artwork?

Where was it presented?

Large house on Portman Square rented specifically for the purposes of the exhibition.

Why? What is Portman Square like? How does it relate to Seven Walks?

How was it presented?

Floor plans?

Loan of period furniture.

Not a white space.

Integrated into the house.

Folders of notes to show development of ideas.

Cinematic presentation vs slideshow at bottom of stairs.

Audience Engagement

People looking at folders but not sitting down.

Schoolkids looking at knotted string and de-coding it.