Chapter Four

How does the exhibition space change the meaning of the work?

When your in an exhibition you look at the art a lot differently than you would anywhere else. An Exhibition is a quiet area in an art gallery if you were to enter you have to be silent. Being quiet helps you to understand and respect the piece of art. When you enter an art gallery you automatically think its art even when it might not be. Having an Art gallery allows peoples work to be appreciated because it has its own area where as if it was in a house people wouldn't understand the meaning of the piece and just see it as a picture because you go to some ones house as a guest so if you were to have a piece of art there they wouldn't necessarily want to know about the piece. Where as in an art gallery you go there to learn about a piece of art your there for a reason, your there to see art and understand it where as your wouldn't take the time out in some ones house to hear about it. Although not everyone sees it as a piece of art a lot of art becomes what it is because of people’s opinions and making of the piece of art.

When I went to the Tate Modern art gallery I viewed a video piece by Paul McCarthy called material gestures. The video was viewed in a dark room played through projectors when I first walked in the room I didn't expect to see what I did the film was very indecent, there was a random man covering himself in chilly sauce and abusing himself I felt slightly uncomfortable watching the film because I wasn't the only on in the room. After a while I began to see the funny side to it but I was left quite confused to why someone would want to film something like that. I Can understand why it is art because for someone to think of something like that and actually produce the piece of art takes a lot of confidence because some people do video's like that every day and get looked down at. The room that I viewed the video in I think made an uncomfortable atmosphere because it was just a big room and I got the impression I had to be quiet and really concentrate. I found that because there was projectors aimed at both walls and there was about 6 projectors playing a selection of different clips as well as pictures coming up I had to really concentrate and make sure I watched a bit of them all which I found quite hard because it got confusing trying to watch all of them at once. Also people would get in the way of the projectors which made the video hard to watch.