www.alecshepley.com
"Neglected buildings and urban spaces can offer a useful metaphor for our state of being especially those that house creative energy and bring new life to the space. x-church in Gainsborough is one such place and I'm delighted with this residency as it offers great opportunities for testing out new works and ideas, perhaps work which is not of art, outside the usual parameters of art, and to explore a renegotiation with audience one that includes audience as maker"
"What first attracted me to x-church, besides its reputation and previous work with artists, was the idea of x-church and the porosity of the building
It occurred to me that instead of proposing to display works within the space and relating them to the user in some way as a site-specific work, I wanted to bring my studio activities into play within the space, to see what happened if I made my studio work a public instead of a private affair
The idea of starting with no preconceived structure, no plan, is very much a part of my process and I was very pleased to hear that this chimed well with how Slumgothic work.I was encouraged to occupy the space to see what happened!
With this in mind I began visiting at various times in the week to mingle and start doing things in response to the way I was feeling about what was going on and the idea of an open house began germinating at a very early stage in the residency
The question was how to approach this from a place I was not used to occupying, conceptually or physically
Adopting the unstructured method of the studio within the space seemed the most natural way forward and the most obvious way of encountering people in the space
Engaging people in this way, openly or invitationally, so to speak, enables a creative process inclusive of those wishing to play but without excluding those who do not wish to partake directly. A level of passivity can be maintained until such time as a more active engagement is sought." AS 2014
New work produced as a result of this residency was subsequently shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei and Alec followed through with a much more ambitious project at Festival x-24 in summer 2015:
Waiting Room, the provisional
artwork: Alec Shepley + 8 invited regional artists
"Often an unfinished or incomplete work is regarded with varying degrees of scepticism and even negativity to a certain extent - as if inconclusiveness somehow equates with failure, and the complete connected with success. On the other hand an unfinished object may also be seen as invitational, waiting for completion e.g. a door not having been given an attractive surface appearance in the final stage of manufacture as the item may be supplied unfinished for you to paint yourself!
The unfinished work sustains a temporary relationship to situation - to the immediacy of condition and surroundings and its own presence. There are many historical examples of works of art, literature, music, film and architecture that have been left incomplete and the hand of fate has often played a key role in this set of circumstances . However, an artwork that is unfinished through a deliberate artistic strategy speaks to our condition as humans and preserves a provisionality that is essential to its interpretation and appreciation. The work or object in this condition speaks about what is not there and in so doing conjures a dialogue with us the viewer about what is actually present and what could be
The deliberately unfinished work can be seen as anticipating a more open, inventive, participatory plurality of voices
The unfinished work amounts to a proposition to engage in the work productively - in its potential future(s) - and situates those encountering the work in the present - in what Benjamin calls the time of the now." AS
2014/15
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