Un-framing: towards repeated acts of deferral and fracture in fine art practice, production & consumption

This paper considers the repeated blurring of the distinction between artwork and display setting, between the ‘pictured space’ and that of the spectator in my practice as an artist. Examples of ‘visual disturbances’ of existing conventions of art production, reception and consumption, through processes of repeated deferral and fracture are discussed. The paper also explores problem finding and delayed closure and reflects on the following issues arising from the practice: • The temporary suspension or ‘short circuit’ of conventions of studio methodology and practice. • The conceptualisation of a ‘ruined, pictured space’ and repeated deferral of ‘outcome’. • The disembodiment of divisions between: object and space; literal concealment and project fantasy; settled comfort and lurking dread (Melville, H. in Vidler, A. 1999, p.57). • The problematisation of perceived physical and conceptual boundaries between art & ‘life’. • The production and consumption of a body of work that speaks to notions ‘ruin’ and catastrophe. The paper shows various attempts to engage with (work in) ‘that place’ described by Buren and Phillipson; to disturb the conventions of production and consumption; to problematise the notion of the art object as a commodity; to work towards a ‘delayed gaze’

My road to ruin: the studio without walls

This paper considers examples of ‘ruin’ in contemporary visual art and examines fracture, fragmentation and provisionality in contemporary installation art practice. Areas of commonality and difference are explored within a critical framework of concepts. The paper contributes towards the creation of a taxonomy of potential source material for the study of ruin in visual art

A place of impossibility

This was a speculative artwork for an imaginary urban development and was included alongside some 26 artists, designers, architects from all around the world within the international exhibition 'New Models for Common Ground' at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi in January/February 2014. This exhibition at IGNCA formed a significant part of the much larger international arts project in Delhi called 'INSERT2014' which was curated by the Raqs Media Collective. The work was accepted after an international call for speculations from Raqs in the autumn of 2014 from artists, curators, scholars, writers & poets, architects, cultural practitioners, activists, culture researchers, critics, media practitioners and engaged art enthusiasts for the re-­imagination of art spaces and cultural infrastructure in Delhi

Site drawing: drawing site

This exhibition, held at the Stella Elkins Galleries, Philadelphia in September 2010, comprised 24 drawings and an accompanying publication. Stella Elkins Galleries, part of a the Temple Gallery programs, connects Philadelphia to new artists and important conversations about art that circulate internationally and has recently shown work by Cory Arcangel, Phil Collins, Paul Chan, Jesper Just, Kalup Linzy, Seth Price, Anri Sala, Berni Searle and Althea Thauberger, among many others. Through this curatorial policy, British artist and academic Alec Shepley, was invited to show drawings that were specially selected to demonstrate a particular function within his creative practice. The drawings in this show provided 'book ends' to ten years' studio practice investigating notions of the 'unfinished work' and forming a procedural part of the 'making' involved in his larger scale installational projects e.g. 'A site for un-building' 2004-05 and others (see: http://alecshepley.org.uk/) In this sense the drawings are 'site drawings' and they play an important and dynamic role on the development and final execution of a project. The subjects of these drawings i.e. tableaux, installations, are manipulated like collages - cut up and moved around, inverted etc, and similarly the drawings, especially the earlier ones are manipulated in this way and can be initially understood as 'drawing sites' exploring the 'un-making' and the 'unfinished' nature of the work (see - http://www.cpara.co.uk/events/repeatrepeat/embodiment.html and http://sensuousknowledge.org/2008/05/alec-shepley/ ). The drawings function as a reflective tool in the dynamics of any given project and are the fragile precipitants or by-products of the often volatile interaction between artist and material

'... but the steady renegotiation of small realities'

This solo exhibition was held at the Vanguard Gallery in the Moganshan District of Shanghai, November 2010. The Gallery, founded in 2004 specialises in showing Asian artists who are working in diverse media, but the gallery's curatorial policy includes an invited show from a European artist. This is the second time Alec has been invited to produce an installation at Vanguard, the first time being in 2006 in a two-man showing called 'Seeing Walls' (see: http://alecshepley.org.uk/) The show '......but the steady renegotiation of small realities', accompanied by a publication in the form of a limited edition book, contributed to an ongoing investigation into notions of the unfinished or incomplete project. Referencing often broken and damaged structures associated with architecture and painting, the exhibition represented a 'paused project' and comprised a number of provisionalised audience engagements seemingly by several different artists. A wall-based grid work with enough spaces to show one hundred drawings of small piles of debris, but actually only showing fifty drawings and fifty empty spaces, appeared to be a work in progress. The drawings, each measuring 50cm x 20cm, were etched onto glass and had been made on a laser cutter. The glass was set 5mm above the back board of the frame and so the actual ‘drawing’ appeared as a transient shadow on the back panel of the frame. The drawings drifted in and out of view with any changes to the light levels in the gallery space. The ephemeral shadows alluded to the absence of drawings in the gaps in the grid. The suite of drawings also echoed a pile of broken model houses in the form of a tableau, on the opposite side of the gallery. This tableau was reminiscent of a traditional still life that comprised broken model houses and four light boxes, each of which contained computer generated architectural form with a distinctive and celestial ‘skin’. Also included was a video loop of a woodland glade in early evening which was evocative of a painting by Poussin or Claude – but uninhabited. On the opposite wall hung a 10m x 1m banner showing 375 photographs. The photographs were the results of another strand of the broader research project exploring notions of fragility – especially with reference to the first and second frame (Kosuth) and ‘parergon’ (Derrida) and ensuing investigations of non-spaces or ‘liminal’ spaces (Matta-Clark). See: http://www.cpara.co.uk/events/repeatrepeat/embodiment.html The photographic piece was accompanied (although not overtly in a literal/physical sense) by a two track video installation in the adjoining gallery space. The two video pieces were filmed in the late afternoon/early evening at two different municipal recycling centres at two different geographical locations. These centres are often found on so-called brownfield sites or ‘unwanted’ land in and around urban/suburban centres. The looped films showed a continuous engagement with unwanted material and objects associated with domestic living

Contouring with a sweeping brush as a catalyst for social engagement and urban renewal

Ruins make for a naturally good metaphor for my circumstance as an artist and a human being, in that they provide me with both a symbol for my uncertainty and supply a kind of creative energy that I can channel and a psychological space I can occupy. They seem paradoxical - pointing in two directions. In one direction, they point towards the past, something lost or fading away and yet they also seem to point simultaneously to something yet to be – something as yet undetermined - something that indicates possibility or hope. They are incomplete, contradictory, ambivalent. They signal doubt and uncertainty. But at the same time, they are embryonic - marching time - waiting. To me ruins are dynamic, energizing, enthralling. In this presentation, I reflect on some of the works I have been making in relation to ruin, waiting and the unfinished

You and I are discontinuous beings

Drawing practice is the research area producing this output: 'Untitled, Essai' (embroidered shadow drawing) calico, grey thread, wooden frame) 600mm (h) 300mm (w) 35mm (d) Statement from exhibition: In this piece, the first of a new series of drawings or essais, I am using the embroidered stitch as a way of tracing a faint line made from a drawing of an already transient and fleeting subject matter – that of shadows and reflected light playing on the walls of the room in which I sit. Reinforcing the line as it reverberates within the room is akin to the reverberations of sounds. Much the same as the room in which you are standing now. The ephemeral play of light is contrasted with the quiet intent of labour

Disclosing ambivalence: contouring, uncertainty and the paradox of escapology

This paper contextualizes two iterations of art practice performed in 2014 by Shepley (i) in the ruined catholic seminary St Peters, Kilmahew, Scotland and (ii) Connaught Place, Delhi, India. The paper examines ways in which he has sought to prolong the notion of artistic activity within the field of distribution and his efforts to disclose potential breaches in the cultural infrastructure emerging through dispersed and uncertain practices. These selected micro-encounters extend the provocation put forward by the Raqs Media Collective during INSERT2014 in Delhi. They are part of his broader practice research highlighting the potential of creative indeterminacy to, push away from ‘art’ and to restore an embodied relationship to the world. The paper explores creative work that attempts, as Marcel Duchamp once wrote, to be not of art, and to delay closure – that closure being the co-opting of art by the institutions that define art as art and that have traditionally distributed it

Distance 2

UK artists Alec Shepley and John McClenaghen were invited to show as part of the gallery’s curatorial policy to host exhibitions by established artists who are committed to an engagement with the wider cultural and academic community. The installation comprising assemblages and collages, photographs and drawings, forms a part of a much broader research project in which the two artists are investigating the presentation of the fragmented work and the ‘unfinished’ project. Aspects of dilapidation, ruin and entropy are explored and much of the work in this exhibition focuses on more positive interpretations of ruin – on a thing that might be coming into being as opposed to being left to decay. The work resulting from the research project is demonstrating a seemingly endless preoccupation with cutting, placing, re-cutting and re-placing, joining and unjoining, in the collages/assemblages (telescoping between making and un-making) and the eventual ‘dis-assembly’ or collapse of the outcome. The paradoxical issue of trying to ‘frame’ something that is meant to remain un-framed is at the heart of the project and questions whether the work itself is in a state of ruin – failing in a way to remain intact and opening up potential spaces for renewed practice – but always coming into being

Distance

This was an exhibition comprising assemblages and collages, photographs and drawings, by UK artists Alec Shepley and John McClenaghen at the Avenue Gallery, Northampton. See: http://avenuegallery.org/Avenue%20Gallery/distance.html and http://www.artrabbit.com/all/events/event/18101/distance_john_mcclenaghen_and_alec_shepley. Shepley and McClenaghen were invited to show as part of the gallery’s curatorial policy to host exhibitions by established artists who are committed to an engagement with the wider cultural and academic community. The show included a limited edition publication and a joint lecture by both artists in the gallery to discuss the aspects of the work in more detail and provide a forum to debate the media, materials, processes and ideas involved and the contextual underpinning. See also: http://www.cpara.co.uk/events/repeatrepeat/embodiment.html and http://sensuousknowledge.org/2008/05/alec-shepley/. The exhibition formed a part of a much broader research project in which the two artists are investigating the presentation of the fragmented work and the ‘unfinished’ project. Aspects of dilapidation, ruin and entropy are explored and much of the work in this exhibition focused on more positive interpretations of ruin – on a thing that might be coming into being as opposed to being left to decay. The work resulting from the research project is demonstrating a seemingly endless preoccupation with cutting, placing, re-cutting and re-placing, joining and unjoining, in the collages/assemblages (telescoping between making and un-making) and the eventual ‘dis-assembly’ or collapse of the outcome. The paradoxical issue of trying to ‘frame’ something that is meant to remain un-framed is at the heart of the project and questions whether the work itself is in a state of ruin – failing in a way to remain intact and opening up potential spaces for renewed practice – but always coming into being. As part of the on-going research project the artists are invited to exhibit new works resulting from their dialogue at the National Academy for Fine Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria in September 2011