Is it working?: GAHHH!!!

So! First class, slide show!

Annette Messager

It is almost impossible to consider photography installation without looking into the work of Annette Messager, a French artist who utilises the medium in a number of her works. Many artists who use photography struggle with the mediums invisibility, the problem that photos are generally looked through, rather than at, the viewer seeing a person rather than a picture of a person. This doesn't seem to be an issue that Messager has had too much trouble with, given the sculptural nature of her photographic installations.

Both of the works below are comprised of many small framed photographs hung together with string. In such a display the individual photographs become less important than the volume and the overall impression.

Beat Streuli

Beat Streuli focuses much of his attention on the street, his exhibitions often comprised of oblivious people, cars, signs, and many other brightly coloured examples of twenty first century streets. Over the years this subject matter has changed very little, but his display methods can be quite varied. Streuli often uses public spaces such as airports, office buildings, and fences, putting his images of the public back into a public sphere. Another common feature in his installations is size, the images are often larger than life, and a number of times her has displayed them as huge transparencies on windows such as those in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Banque Pictet, Geneva, 2009 - Wallpaper installation, 2,50 x 50 meters ('Untitled', permanent installation, 2009)

Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona, 1998 - Translucent prints mounted on acrylic glass ('Plaça dels Angels', 1998)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1999 - Translucent prints mounted on acrylic glass, 300 x 300 cm each ('Chicago Portraits July 99', 1999)

Outlook, Athens, 2003 - 50 digital prints mounted on wall, ca. 110 x 160 cm each ('Athens April 03', 2003)

ARGE Kunst, 'consens', Bolzano, 2006 - billboard, 3.60 x 27 m (Travelers, 1997)

Murray Guy, New York, 2006 - Digital prints mounted on walls, 2.40 x 15 m ('Brussels 05/06', 2006)

Beat Streuli's website is here and he has a prodigious number of installations on there from 1996 to last year.

The Bechers

Bernd and Hilla Becher are worth looking into if undertaking any form of topographical series. Their documentation of similar buildings, including water towers (below) and other industrial buildings needed a mode of display that suited the orderly fashion with which they had been chosen and framed. The grid is a classic way to display series such as these. The exhibition method is appropriate to the overall work in its use of visual filing.

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is probably the only artist here whose work I have seen in person. His work, The Messenger, which videos a man sinking and surfacing in a huge depth of water was exhibited at The Dowse in 2010.

Viola does a lot of work with video installation, much of which is site specific.

Bill Viola: The Messenger, 1996. Video/sound installation. Photo: Kira Perov

‘the veiling’, 1995- video still

Here the video is projected through thin layers of material, layering the image and giving it an ethereal quality.

Viola's Website is here

Douglas Gordon

For this work Gordon had an Elephant brought into the studio where she was filmed in various poses, as her trainer directed her. The footage where then silently played on a number of screens inside the same gallery.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this work, I think it would be visually very impressive, and conceptually it is interesting, but something about treating and elephant this way really doesn't sit well with me. the use of different screens displaying different angles, and the small TV showing the close up of the eye is effective.

Douglas Gordon
Play Dead; Real Time
Installation view
2003
at Gagosian

"The tape, which is a series of circling shots, has been edited so that there are regular fades to black. Each time the scene resumes, Minnie is lying down (the monitor's segments always start with a close-up of her eye). This gives Play Dead a rhythm and an unconscious storyline. Minnie lies down and we wait for her, pull for her, to get up. This rising turns out to be a fairly remarkable, freaky sight. Once she's up, the camera resumes circling her like some classically trained hyena. When the viewer circles the screens, the whole scene turns slightly vertiginous. " Elephant Man

by Jerry Saltz

Andreas Gursky

While I managed to find a number of Gursky's images (unsurprisingly, this is not difficult) I can't seem to track down any documentation of his work on gallery walls. Having not seen any myself, Jenny has assured us that they are large scale prints.

Andreas Gursky. 99 Cent. 1999.
Chromogenic color print.
6 ' 9 1/2" x 11' (207 x 337 cm).
Lent by the artist, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, and Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne
© 2001 Andreas Gursky.

Gillian Wearing

Use of coloured frames

GILLIAN WEARING

10 October — 19 December 2006

6 — 8

exhibition view, lower gallery
Maureen Paley
2006

Hans Haacke

The problem with studying photography in New Zealand is not having the opportunity to see theses works in person, this is especially problematic when researching installations, as it is impossible gain a real impression of how the work sits in the gallery, which is why I'm giving you this synopsis of Haacke's Shapolsky et al. because I haven't seen it so I really can't tell you how many pictures there were et cetera et cetera, you may be able to tell I am getting frustrated.

«Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971»

The work consists of 146 photographic views of New York apartment buildings, six pictures of transactions, an explanatory wall panel, and maps of Harlem and the Lower East Side. Each photograph is accompanied by a typed text that describes the location and the financial transctions involving the building in the picture. Haacke discloses the transactions of a real-estate firm between 1951 and 1971.

(source: excerpt from documenta X short guide, Ostfildern 1997, p. 84.)

(which I found here)

From the pictures, Haacke's method of display succeeds in its orderliness while having the interesting, yet unobtrusive quality of the two rows of frames not lining up.

Gavin Hipkins

Interesting for the way the frames are kept flush, and the inclusion of the corner in the display. There was another photograph of an exhibition of Hipkins' work where each photograph was juxaposed with a large block of colour, but I can't find a picture of this one.

The Homely, 1997-2000
installation view City Gallery Wellington, 80 c-type prints, each 406 x 610mm, Queensland Art Galler

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hmmm..... somewhere there are pictures of a Sugimoto installation where he uses custom made frames of odd shapes to display his photographs, I can't find any records of this but I will keep looking!

Jason Evans

Rather than use the 'white cube' of a traditional gallery space Jason Evans painted bright geometric shapes on the walls before hanging. From what I saw, I didn't particularly like it, but its hard to say how it would read in person.

Jeff Wall

Huge light boxes.

Joseph Kosuth

Martin Parr

Large scale, slightly garish prints , range of sizes, etc, 'Salon Hang'

glass top tables

Nam June Paik

is considered to be the grandfather of video installation. His installations are ambitious, arresting, and play upon the three dimensional object.

Nam June Paik: Reclining Buddha, 1994

2 color televisions, 2 Pioneer laser disk players, 2 original Paik laser disks, found object Buddha, 20 x 24 x 14 inches

TV Garden, 1974 (2000 version). Video installation with color television sets and live plants, dimensions vary with installation. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Nobuyoshi Araki

Prodigious output. Rooms and hallways completely coated, floor to ceiling, with images. Importance of architecture.

Small images lining walls, low on the wall, crouching to look at the work. Working for it.

I was thinking about this photographer earlier today, but I couldn't remember his name, when we looked at him most recently we never touched on the subjects of his images, only on his methods of exhibition. However, we watched a documentary on him last year and he talks about this picture as being the only photograph he took of his wife that she actually liked. He said it was taken on their honeymoon and that all she wanted to do on the honeymoon was to take this boat ride, it was what she was most looking forward to, but they spent the whole time having so much sex that by the time the got to the boat she was exhausted and slept through the whole ride.

Olafur Elliasson

Grid of multiples, different colour waterfalls, working with repetition.

On Kawara

Sascha Weidner

Believes that the whole exhibition space should be utilised when hanging work, rather than the traditional 57" to centre.

An especially innovative exhibition of Weidner's was 'What Remains'

In this show two galleries were lined with shelves holding photographs. In one gallery the images faced out and in the other they faced the wall. Visitors to the exhibition were invited to take one of the outward facing photographs home with them, in exchange for which they were asked to leave a note explaining why they chose that particular one. When a photo in the outward facing gallery was taken the same image in the other gallery would be turned around.

Sophie Calle

is still my favourite.

Sophie Calle: The Sleepers (Les Dormeurs), 1979; gelatin silver prints with ink and black metal frames; 6" x 8" one photo and text unit; courtesy of the artist and Fred Hoffman Gallery, Santa Monica.

The Blind, 1986

installation view of “Soucis” at the “Palais des Beaux Arts”, Bruxelles, 2009

Use of numerous frames, different sizes, levels, framed text, juxtaposition, shelves.

Sriwhana Spong

Dancing Celestial, installation detail, The Physics Room, Chc.2000

frames without backing boards

Stephen Shore

Signs of Life

Mural type work

go back and read this

Thomas Ruff

Installation view at 303 Gallery, New York 1989

At the start of second year we had a really intimidating tutor, who, at the start of the class, yelled at us all for not knowing who Thomas Ruff is. Safe to say we are all very familiar with his work now.

In a lecture he gave (the same year as the yelling) he said that when he first exhibited the portraits the audience looked through the images and said 'Hey look, there's Hans' or there's So-and-so rather than focusing on the fact that these where photographs of Hans and So-and-so. So he made the photographs larger than life so that the viewer couldn't avoid noticing the medium.

Thomas Struth