“We can once again declare the Museum makes its ‘mark,’ imposes its ‘frame’ (physical and moral) on everything that is exhibited in it, in a deep and indelible way.” [Daniel Buren]

In 1824 William Hazlitt, on visiting the newly opened National Gallery in Trafalgar Square initiated what remains, in 2009 a contemporary topic of discussion, that special ‘quality’ of the art gallery. Describing the ritualistic nature of his experience within the house at Pall Mall Hazlitt observed:

“We are abstracted to another sphere. We breath empyrean air; we enter into the minds of Raphael, of Titian… and look at nature with their eyes. Here is the minds true home. The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created.” “The business of the world at large… appear like vanity… what signify the hubbub, the folly… when compared with the solitude, the silence, the speaking looks, the unfading forms within?”

Hazlitt’s experience remains arguably typical of visiting a museum, consequently museums remain for many the public façade of an intimidating institution, demanding quiet, informed perception of the works within their awe inspiring spaces. Within the eighteenth century art galleries became “indispensible ornaments of any great city,” arising from the elaborate private collections of the bourgeois class public art galleries, from their conception remain synonymous with an aim to educate and edify. Nearly every gallery today promotes the accessibility of its collection “to the widest possible audience,” the Tate’s mission for 2015 is to become more open, diverse, global however, despite such assurances by institutions they remain, for many a daunting experience. Developments in architectural style illustrate this desire, and requirement, to become more welcoming; the classical façade of many eighteenth century galleries was favoured for its reflection of the museums ideological function, “it is meant to impress upon those who use or pass through it society’s most revered beliefs and values.” Such an appearance is one now purposefully evaded by galleries such as the Centre Pompidou, whose automatic, street level glass doors are both a symbolic and practical way to welcome individuals from the streets of Paris.

This short mapping of galleries evolution is not without motive, for it establishes the institution and its connotations which alternative spaces aim to eschew. The purpose of this writing is to investigate the current trend amongst artists and exhibition organisers to display works of art in ‘alternative spaces’. An alternative space, for the purpose of this writing, may be defined as any environment other than those constructed with the intention of displaying works of art.

Despite the chief aim of this writing – which is to focus upon an increasing number of exhibitions within alternative spaces occurring within the last two years – an awareness of previous challenges to the confines of the gallery space is necessary in order to assist the reader in contextualising the five contemporary exhibitions and projects examined which, present works by Oreet Ashery, Jeremy Deller, Alaistair Mackie, Christian Marclay and Bill Viola amongst many others within a diverse selection of alternative spaces.

Widely regarded as precursors to the genre of Performance Art numerous artists within Dada and Russian Futurism staged events which took place outside gallery spaces. Of one such work, the Futurists Aerial Theatre (1918), Fedele Azare says “We futurist aviators will give day and night performances… painted aeroplanes will dance in a coloured aerial environment.” A further event, described within Dick Higgins Postface is that of a large tent set up by a friend of Bragaglia’s, containing a labyrinth of rags through which visitors were persuaded to progress on a motorcycle; both anticipate the latter use of performance by artists in the 1960s, challenging both what is considered art and the situation in which this encountered.

The work of Performance Artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneeman removed any intermediary between artist and audience; largely anarchic works forced the audience to reassess their preconceptions of art. In her seminal text on the genre arising in the 1960s Roselee Goldberg states a work of performance art may be presented “in places ranging from an art gallery or museum to an “alternative space”, a theatre, café, bar or street corner.”

Robert Rauschenberg’s performance Map Room II (1965) took place within the New York cinema Filmmaker’s Cinematheque; Rauschenberg constructed a confined stage within the traditional stage which lengthened into the audience, upon this dancers interacted with objects placed by the artist. Two aspects shaped Rauschenberg’s work; these were the dancers, all of whom were ex students of Cunningham, and, crucially by the situation in which the performance took place, “the first information I need is where it is to be done and when… which has a lot to do with the shape it takes, with the kinds of activity.” Imbedded within Performance Art was a desire to revolutionise art; Performance Art denied a seemingly essential characteristic of art, that of the tangible object, and with its development into action the transcendental ability of art, furthermore its situation. No longer was the art of the Performance Artists an eternal object contemplated within an art gallery, it became an immediate expression by the artist, to an audience in whatever space deemed suitable by the artist. In moving beyond institutional assumptions of art artists broke out physically and metaphorically from the framework of the gallery.

In a similar period the work of emerging Land and Environmental artists, such as Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson began to challenge inherited notions – such as the seminal importance of the White Cube Gallery – of the previous decade; turning instead in the 1960s towards the vast open spaces of the American landscape. Disenchanted with a previous decade which had – arguably – co modified the works of the Abstract Expressionists, a number of conceptual artists responded by creating works which “questioned established notions of the artistic object, as well as the authority of its context.” Arthur Marwick, in the social and historical text The Sixties discusses the complex political and social situation in America through the late 1950s and into the 1960s – a situation critical to the artistic developments of the era – and one which Marwick proposes to be a “mini renaissance.” “For some [the 1960s] is a golden age, for others a time when the old secure frame work of morality, authority and discipline disintegrated.” Progressive black civil rights, the beginnings of youth culture and drastic changes in personal relationships and sexual behaviour contrasted starkly to the rigid social hierarchy of the 1950s. Within such a new found awakening of consciousness the recognition of the personal and political power of the individual arose, facilitating attacks on previously sacrosanct institution. These attacks ruptured the unchallenged power of institutions, amongst them the art institution; and in doing so “unveiled the museum as providing a stabilizing structure that perpetuates the difference between the educated and underprivileged.”

Engaging in a critique that examined “the microcosmic economic and political preconditions that were channelled through the art-world container and inflected the meaning of all artworks” artists such as Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Marcel Broothaers and Hans Haacke have become synonymous with the critique of institutions. Originating decades later the term ‘Institutional Critique’ emerged amongst interactive and performative works such as Museum Highlights (1989) by Andrea Fraser. Buren in his 1973 text “The Function of the Museum” declares the “mark” which the Museum places upon works within it, and asserts that it too imposes a “frame (physical and moral)” upon everything within it, yet Buren does not condemn the institution for doing so, instead he places the responsibility to acknowledge its authority with artists who create works “whose portable form predestines it to a life of circulation and exchange, market and museological incorporation.”

Buren undertook site-specific interventions as a means to reflect and resist such institutional influences and to draw attention to spaces outside the gallery, “working in situ he began using the stripe as a means of visually relating art to its situation; a form of language in space rather than a space in itself. He set up hundreds of striped posters around Paris and later in more than 100 metro stations, drawing public attention through his unauthorised acts.” Asher reminds are transitory, further acknowledging the “historical specificity of any critical intervention” as they are “limited to a particular time and place.”

In plastering locations within the city of Paris such as billboards and walls with his now iconic posters, of coloured, 8.7 centimetre wide vertical stripes, alternated with white, Buren challenged the notion that art was necessarily placed within an institution which disconnected art and society, a disconnection which artists undertaking works in public spaces such as the London Underground also aim to reconcile.

A relatively empty Wednesday afternoon on the London Underground afforded me the opportunity to discover one of the many works of art nestled amongst the some 274 stations on the network, on this occasion a quote, part of British artist Jeremy Deller’s project What is the city but the people? The poster proffers the quote “The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man,” from the nineteenth century Canadian poet, and forms one element of Deller’s 2009 project with the Platform for Art programme. Established in 2000 the Platform for Art is the London Underground Networks current art commissioning programme; the network established the Platform for Art to continue commissioning contemporary artists, such as Deller to create works to enhance both the environment and the journeys of the public around London. What is the City but the people? consists of two distinct elements: posters, found across the network and an interactive element between staff and the public on the Piccadilly Line.

A photographic bust portrait of Bliss Carmen – one work within a series portraying individuals such as Napoleon and Satre – with the above quote overlaid is printed on paper of a standard, large advertisement size. The harmoniously tinted portrait contains only the most discreet of emblems signifying it as a work of art, and is displayed at the pinnacle of one of the numerous escalators emerging into the concourse at Oxford Circus amongst many other similar size commercial advertisements.

On encountering the Bliss Cameron portrait shortly after returning from Paris an unexpected comparison between the installation of this work and the Winged Victory of Samothrace transpired. By no means is this a suggestion that the two are displayed within comparable buildings, instead that their respective locations provide fascinating archetypal examples of contrasting notions behind the display and perception of works of art within an comparable arrangement of architectural features.

Text: © Sara Kellett, 2010

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Tagged: Alaistair Mackie, All Visual Arts, art, artist, At the Beginning, awe, Bill Viola, Bliss Cameron, Buren, contemporary art, display, displaying, exhibition, Frieze Art Fair, Harland Miller, Holy Trinity Church, institution, intervention, Jeremy Deller, Joe La Placa, London Underground, Mike Platt, museum, Oreet Ashery, Pae White, performance, Platform for Art, Polly Morgan, Predrag Pajdic, public space, recognise, Robert Rauschenberg, Shoreditch Town Hall, Sir John Soane, site-specific, space, The Age of the Marvellous, White Cube Gallery, Winged Victory of Samothrace, wonder, You Dig the Tunnel I’ll Hide the Soil