Monday, 18 February 2013
Sunday, 17 February 2013
The Beheading
SB: So are we starting?
RI: yes
SB: Might as well. Who is the MC?
RI: You
SB: Ok. So, my name is Steven. This is Riccardo. I’m just setting my mic level.
[ Steven pinches his nose and adjusts his cap]
RI: You
SB: Ok. So, my name is Steven. This is Riccardo. I’m just setting my mic level.
[ Steven pinches his nose and adjusts his cap]
So this is what has been billed as the gallery talk for Riccardo’s This Orientation show. Does anybody have any questions?
A:
SB: So. If there aren’t any questions, thank you for coming...
A:
SB: One question I had, which would be a way of kicking off this idea of doing a talk, is about the relationship of your film and video practice to this installation, if we can call it an installation.
RI: We need more light!
SB: There’s a light over there. You just turn that round.
A: How did you get on to the website?
SB: Yes. this is online now. We are streaming now. If you go to thisorientation.blogspot.co.uk it will be streaming on there as well.
A: Come on Wembley!
SB: So, your film and video practice and this space, I think there’s a kind of discontinuity.
RI: Actually, I think the place to start is over there [by the window]
SB: Okay.
A: Lets start over here.
RI: Over there.
SB: shall I ask the question again?
RI: ask the question again, I’ll go and get the computer.
SB: I’ll wait for the computer
A: Put it on the fridge.
RI: Ok. I’ll put it on the fridge. Okay, so I’ll start here.
When I first came to the gallery I was struck by the view.
[Riccardo opens window blind].
Look at that light!
So, I wanted to make a piece of work that you could only see from this window. So the gallery would be empty and you’d have to come to the gallery and look through this window to see it outside. I was also interested in this surface (the window), this transparent plane, which for me was a bit like film, celluloid. My early works were actually painted onto clear film and the abstract film that is on that monitor down there, SKZCP (1997/2000 looped edition), was created by painting directly onto 16mm film.
SB: So we are getting around to the idea of the relationship between the pane of glass is taking the place of the film strip.
RI: Yes, so this whole space becomes a kind of film space, an event space. Basically, I wanted to make a cameraless film, I was actually interested in making a cameraless film and when I first started painting on to film i didn’t use a camera, but the abstract film that is showing over there. If we go back to there, you can see. that’s one of my early works made in the early 90’s and it looks like its got a dark background but its actually painted onto completely clear film, just like that window, and it involves lighting from different angles. so that it captures the textural qualities of the film and it makes the background look opaque. So I suppose I was trying to emulate those qualities with this window.
But also, that film there requires the use of a camera. It couldn’t exist without the use of a camera. So it’s a composition for camera.
SB: That’s something you were saying last time that I was here, that you’d been arranging the objects in the space to photograph them, and so actually, a visit to the space is not necessarily visiting a space that can be viewed within the space that it’s in but is primarily for the view of the camera. Is that still the case or have you since moved things around?
RI:
I
think it can be viewed in lots of different ways, with the naked eye,
with a camera, with a photograph, with conversation actually. In the
opening of the exhibition I was still hanging the show and
people at the opening were actually helping me put things up. It was
an event and creative process that involved other people, sharing and
feedback.
SB:
But
the entire show has been like that.. It’s continued to change.
RI:
Its ended up pretty much as it started really.
__________________________________________
RI:
The
starting point
is when you come through the door, or its when you actually read the
press release and you get guided to a venue, to a place.
SB:
Yes,
but there are also other ways, like the website or the blog could be
a starting point as well, because often it’s the way things are
disseminated if you like, via the blog and then they come back here.
I mean, I noticed the way that we’ve been working on the blog
things have become kind of manipulated and changed and re-ordered and
edited, just in that space, if it is a space, as much as they have in
here.
So
I
see it as a completely dynamic environment, not just the environment
of the room, but the environment the show projects itself into
outside of the room.
Also, I find it interesting the way that the immediate surrounding
area finds its way into the space, with the tyres and the photographs
of the view from out there and various other things. So there’s
this kind of continual spillover from one space to the other.
Guy
Sherwin
(GS): Can I just say something?
SB:
Please do.
GS:
I’ve just got a message from Lynn (Lynn Loo) that she can see your
back. She’s in Singapore.
SB:
Shall we say hello to Lynn in Singapore?
RI:
Hi
Lynn! It’s funny waving at an Italian landscape when in fact you
are actually looking at somebody in Singapore;
waving through the train window passing through an Italian landscape
filmed two years ago..
A:
That’s so strange!
SB:
It’s nice to know that the show is now in Singapore, as well as..
A:
Italy
SB:
As well as here.
Photo: Paul Martin
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Photography
On Friday you told me that you had been arranging the pieces in the show primarily to photograph them, so while the photos look really good, the objects as arranged in the room look arbitrary and poorly placed. You said that it was something like the way you used to work with film, hand drawn, manipulated specifically for the camera.
I find this quite an interesting idea, that composition for one point of view, one orientation in relation to the objects and the space, this orientation may not be conducive to a 'successful' experience in the space, that the intended view might be this one here. This is quite at odds with the conventions of installation as sculptural object in space, which is to take account of how the object occupies the space and the visitors' relationship to it. It is instead to suggest that the ideal viewer, is not a visitor to the space. Indeed is the ideal viewer even the one looking at the photograph, or even the photographer? Perhaps the ideal viewer is the camera itself, this is the way the camera sees the show. (SB)
As I work in the space my interests change. My ideas develop and my understanding of what it is that I am doing changes. My orientation to the image and creative impulses are governed by temporal shifts in perception and materials and processes I use to see.
The image is not fixed. The viewer may encounter the work via this blog or or by visiting the space, or by word of mouth or via other distribution systems.edit
light bleeding
edit
but edit
edit but
edit
edit but
edit
but edit
the
but
image
but
is
not
edit
fixed
edit
or
but
edit
edit
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edit
bound
Joe shoots a video! 160213
Joe captures the exhibition on video, with Mandy McIntosh and Kaffe Matthews
Friday, 15 February 2013
any questions?
I've always wanted to start a talk with questions from the audience.
What do you think?
Thursday, 14 February 2013
This blog may...
This blog may, in many ways, be less of a conversation and more an extension of the show. Similar to the way that the show seems to extend, explode, implode, to spillover between interior and exterior, to be inclusive and exclusive, so the blog has become an extension not just of the show, but also of the processes of the show. And where Riccardo is continually moving things around, taping things up, painting things, moving things from inside to outside, from outside to inside, so posts to this blog become manipulated as images, are amended and addended, comments are made, comments become images, images become blurred, videos are posted, become re-edited, reworked.
Spatial and physical metaphors are commonplace on the web, cliched even, deeply embedded in its language and structure. It is a spatialised network of 'sites', 'spaces', 'pages', but its space is not physical, 'real' space, it is virtual and we all know that (don't we?), and the metaphors persist and spread as many aspects of human social behaviour migrates onto and across the network. This blog exemplifies that, its posts becoming mutable, as extensions of once physical objects and relations.
How will the 'space' of this blog, re-enter the gallery space of the show? In conversation on Sunday, for sure, we're bound to be picking up on posts and comments made here. Also the live feed of the conversation will be available on this blog, on UStream, projected in the gallery, as the permeability and flow between real time 'spaces' of the network and gallery continue to extend and multiply.
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Monday, 11 February 2013
in flux
FluxWe have been having an online conversation in tandem with the show on the blog. I’m able to rework the online material and keep the project live that way. It’s also interesting because it blurs the authorship. The critique becomes an integral part of the work. It’s a discussion that springs from the work. For me, it’s a very organic, free flowing project, extending beyond the space.
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Whose Orientation?
On Friday you told me that you had been arranging the pieces in the show primarily to photograph them, so while the photos look really good, the objects as arranged in the room look arbitrary and poorly placed. You said that it was something like the way you used to work with film, hand drawn, manipulated specifically for the camera.
I find this quite an interesting idea, that composition for one point of view, one orientation in relation to the objects and the space, this orientation may not be conducive to a 'successful' experience in the space, that the intended view might be this one here. This is quite at odds with the conventions of installation as sculptural object in space, which is to take account of how the object occupies the space and the visitors' relationship to it. It is instead to suggest that the ideal viewer, is not a visitor to the space. Indeed is the ideal viewer even the one looking at the photograph, or even the photographer? Perhaps the ideal viewer is the camera itself, this is the way the camera sees the show. (SB)
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