Fran Cottell : Artwork : Dis-membered

Description

Rosalind Krauss in her essay: Grids (2) describes grids as being ‘antinatural, antimimetic, antireal’ and the ‘paradigm or model for the antidevelopmental, the antinarrative, the antihistorical’... which means that they can also provide a ‘mutually accessible space’... The work I made for DIS-MEMBER was to take a formal structure: the gallery model and then interposes something living, changing and individual. The participants were invited to lie comfortably on their backs on the living room floor, heads on cushions looking at the ceiling in a radial formation around a central cardboard box. The gallery model was revealed from the box, rather like a cake at a party and the group were invited by the gallery curator to exhibit in the ‘Members Show’ and put their fingers, through the picture shaped spaced holes.... the participant’s ‘finger performance’ proved both moving and hilarious.