DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH
My work is constantly changing theoretically and therefore visually, I am a de-centered practitioner; working on multiple themes in various mediums with an indistinct style running through all of my work. I am constantly journeying, understanding, testing and hypothesizing concepts whilst, running parrallel, am attempting to express a concept relatively and objectively.
Using Joseph Beuys’ public persona as an example, that he created from fact and fiction, a contrived self-appointed personal stance thread that takes some of the objectivity away from the viewer. Yet this subjectivity may have been a prerequisite to his further works, in a similar way to my semester 3 (which in hindsight are art as therapy) creations. Art Theorist, Benjamin Buchloh criticises Beuys retreat into myths and symbolism and criticises Beuys’ rhetoric, calling it, ‘simple minded, utopian drivel’.

I am interested in art being a way of life and how much art and life can infringe and harmonise with each other. Bourriard states that, ‘contemporary art is definitely developing a political project when it endeavors to move into the relational realm by turning it into an issue.’
Spaces and accessing relational aesthetics
The aesthetic is predetermined by the site and by the found objects used to create the den and the control is a piece of vintage fabric, usually used for the dens roof. The intention upon initialising this project was to change spaces and integrate these spaces into the environment, with intention to leave the dens after initial creation to be evolved, de-created or untouched by the public, institution workers and nature. I am interested in what happens to the dens post-creation with more emphasis on how the work lives on in the viewers text or participation and less
of what the author states that the work means. with reference to Barthe’s essay, ‘From work to text.’ Barthes’ explained that, “the Text is radically symbolic: a work conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature is a text.” What happens to the work after creation, socially, with audience participation or naturally, after the author leaves.
DEN5, Social Habitat
.
Bourriard defines a relational art as, “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independant and symbolic space.” In my dens project, I am lessening the importance of a ‘symbolic space’, therefore the notions of Barthes’ ‘text’ become a lesser relevance compared to the ‘realm of human interactions and its social context’, that Barthes states as relational art.
Rikrit Tiravanija inhabited the gallery space and served up ‘pad thai’ to his viewers.
Bourriard states that, ‘art is a state of encounter.’
Bishop disregards Tirivanija’s work for targeting a niche audience only, an audience of ‘gallery-goers’ who do not fit the bill of a democratic relational art. She states that,”.....”. Bishop rates Santiago Sierra’s work for reflecting the “tension..... (art and social sphere)”, in ‘6 people paid to remain in cardboard boxes’, where he pays illegal workers $9 for occupying a box for 3 hours. She shuns) Bourriards vision of relational art as being harmonious and utopian, yet I think there is still a possibility here for relational art not to have serious undertones. According to Bourriard, a work is political as soon as it, “incorporates.....people socially,” and Bishop quotes ....... as ...... Sierra goes into public streets to find illegal workers before his exhibition gallery opens.
