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20 April 2010

Random acts of art

Projects that involve people coming across art in unexpected places fascinate me. A feather threaded through a leaf as you walk along the path - that sort of thing - showing that someone has stopped, looked, thought, acted - "made an intervention". Do they go unnoticed ... are they overlooked ... who sees them, what do they think? It's like stumbling upon secrets...

"Land art" is one sort of intervention. Public art is, too - but it's noticeable, planned, paid for, and will be there for a while. What intrigues me are random, unpredictable occurrences - like Charlotte Hughes's Milk Bottle Project, in which she engraved glass bottles and left them on strangers' doorsteps -Then there are the textile interventions - like Paulene Cattle's jute chains -and even "guerilla knitting" (more pix here).As the other side of the coin, consider "thoughtless acts" - Janet Fulton Suri has built her design career on noticing the intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment. Here's one such "thoughtless act", from this wide-ranging blog.But is it art??

5 comments:

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  2. But is it art??
    Sincerely hope so Margaret, otherwise that's my degree down the pan!

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  3. Having just discovered my garden chair making unexpected appearances all over the internet, I wanted to say how delighted we were to discover Paulene's art in our garden.

    Yes, I believe it's art in that it's a visual provocation to form an opinion, to arouse interest and prompt a response of some kind. It will continue to do that as other people discover and view it from a different standpoint. I intend to collect the responses and share them with the artist.

    I must say it was funny to find a photo of my chair here - just goes to show that we have no idea what our furniture gets up to when we're not looking!

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  4. Here's an example of "what our furniture gets up to when we aren't looking" - Norman McLaren's "Chairy Tale" animation -
    http://www.nfb.ca/film/a_Chairy_tale

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  5. Delightful! Thank you for sharing that, Margaret.

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