From the cupboard to the boardroom and back: 100 plaster objects

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Abstract / Description of output

From the cupboard to the boardroom and back: 100 plaster objects

In 2011, as Head of the School of Art, we invited the Dutch artist Krijn de Koning to undertake a residency as the John Florent Stone Fellow. This resulted in an Edinburgh Art Festival co-commission, ‘Land’, in the Sculpture Court at Edinburgh College of Art, his first work in the UK.

De Koning uses archetypal architectural constructs to imprint a sense of place on an overlooked or charged space. Using the College’s cast collection and cavernous Sculpture Court the artist built platforms, altering our perception of the space, restricting sections and offering us new perspectives of the casts. He stated that he “….wanted to make an artwork as a place, to give a use to it, so people could walk on it or use it for a discussion or a debate.”
Time-lapse footage is here https://vimeo.com/71568110

During the fellowship Krijn and I worked with a group of students on a project centred around 100 small plaster objects that were donated by the estate of Eduardo Paolozzi to the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. These models and casts were stored in cardboard boxes in a cupboard next to the Turing Room where a set of Paolozzi’s Turing prints decorate the walls. In that room we unpacked the boxes and catalogued the objects in sketchbooks and photographs. Over a period of days we learned from the objects and each other. The intended outcome was to find a way of making the works public but what was more intriguing were the odd, disparate, delicate forms, the curious way they had been wrapped and stored, and our discussions and ideas about the different senses of history and value we ascribed to the collection. For us, the place they inhabited was compelling and exhibiting them seemed disingenuous and trite. We wrapped the objects back up as adroitly as possible and returned them to their cardboard boxes in the cupboard.

I have never taken the opportunity to turn this experience into anything other than an anecdote. This call for papers seems like the ideal situation to explore, discuss and learn more about the encounter and I propose to relate the experience using images, drawings and writing using ‘Land’ and my own interest in latent history and heuristic approaches to teaching and research as touchstones.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusUnpublished - 29 May 2015
EventBrighton Writes - Place based arts - England, Brighton, United Kingdom
Duration: 29 May 201530 May 2015

Conference

ConferenceBrighton Writes - Place based arts
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityBrighton
Period29/05/1530/05/15

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • place based art
  • creative writing

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