When you are in an exhibition it is very different to looking at art at home. First of all the environment is different in an exhibition as you are in a quiet place concentrating on the work and having all your thoughts to yourself. Having work in a gallery automatically means you are going to look at art as this is what gallery's are designed for but it also depends if the people think it is art or not. Exhibitions have white walls and this means when you look at the work you have all your attention on the work but if you were somewhere else you could be distracted. If you were at home and had a piece of art on your wall. You would have picked it out and it would mean something to you as you liked it enough to put it up in your house so the meaning of the work would be personal to them, than any piece of work in an exhibition.
When I went to the Tate modern I saw Paul McCarthy's "Material gestures". When I was walking in I was not sure what was inside and was shocked as it was nude videos. The room was dark with 4 or 5 projectors on tables in the middle. The room was dark so it felt like I was in a cinema and had to be quite. Other people around me were really interested and some were writing notes on the piece. The atmosphere made me feel uncomfortable and like I was in a dingy space. There was 4 or 5 videos on the wall that overlapped so you were overwhelmed with the content of the videos. The artist deliberately made it so people would feel disturbed as the content of his videos is shocking and the room it’s in adds to how the artist wants you feel.
If the video was in a different environment i think it would still be shocking but would not make you feel so uncomfortable as the dark lighting made you feel like you were somewhere dirty. Also the content of the videos was in darkly lit places with browns and reds so being in a room where the atmosphere was very seedy and darkly lit.
When I went to the Tate modern I saw Paul McCarthy's "Material gestures". When I was walking in I was not sure what was inside and was shocked as it was nude videos. The room was dark with 4 or 5 projectors on tables in the middle. The room was dark so it felt like I was in a cinema and had to be quite. Other people around me were really interested and some were writing notes on the piece. The atmosphere made me feel uncomfortable and like I was in a dingy space. There was 4 or 5 videos on the wall that overlapped so you were overwhelmed with the content of the videos. The artist deliberately made it so people would feel disturbed as the content of his videos is shocking and the room it’s in adds to how the artist wants you feel.
If the video was in a different environment i think it would still be shocking but would not make you feel so uncomfortable as the dark lighting made you feel like you were somewhere dirty. Also the content of the videos was in darkly lit places with browns and reds so being in a room where the atmosphere was very seedy and darkly lit.
Very good Rosie. How about if you saw that video in a diffrent space would it be less shocking? Would you feel more able to comment? Would you feel less enclosed?
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