TILT, written response by Ian Jeffrey, October 2023.
What did you think of the exhibition?
That is a large question to begin with! I didn’t think at all when I went into the space. One has to orientate oneself. I saw what looked like a set of tents, suggesting that I go into them – that is the kind of invitation that tents make. Then I had to find my way, for the spaces were awkward. If I go in this direction I will have to stoop and trust that I find an exit on the far side. I didn’t memorize the lay-out when I exited. Maybe I should turn aside and look at larger and more congenial spaces, I thought for a moment. No, go ahead and see what turns up! Eventually I make my way out of what seems like a labyrinth of sorts. Outside, I look back and can more or less trace my route through the folds. So, I make another and more informed attempt at getting through the spaces, and this time I am more daring – because more confident.
It sounds so far like an army training course rather than ART.
That might be true, up to a point. I did feel apprehensive, but not really threatened. What interested me was the look of the outside of the structure with reference to what I had experienced inside, and I recalled my short journey under canvas– in preparation for my new attempt on the labyrinth. I recalled myself walking upright (normally) and then bent double (stooped) as the channel narrowed and dipped. So, I was upright and in command of the scene, and then I was stooped and impeded – or blinded – looking for the exit. So, there is a piece of structure here: contrasting opposites – sighted and unsighted, upright and stooped. I come out of the experience with a configuration or a piece of rhyme made up of opposites.
Is that significant, do you think? It doesn’t sound like much to me.
It may not sound like much, but I think that we go through life on the lookout for pieces of rhyme and pattern, pointers to structure made up of similarities and differences. After several adventures in the labyrinth I walked onto the stage to speak to an overseer seated on a chair. She was part of the scheme that I had enacted or sensed for she was there to watch and to see that participants didn’t come to grief. She was seated and upright in order to maintain a viewpoint, and that fitted into the range of my enactments: upright and wary, stooped and trusting to luck. I was beginning to notice patterns and series – or sets based on posture and attentiveness. There were also people at the front of the installation who were standing and talking to each other – and that is another way of being with its own postures and gestures. I would say that the installation slowed things (gestures and postures) down so that we could notice and appreciate them. The idea was to decelerate our actions to the point that we became aware of them as distinct motifs.
Can you be clearer?
Yes, I would say that art is to some degree involved in deceleration, which I would associate with deliberation. Recently there has been an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam called ‘’Real Families’’. It included a Poussin ‘’Annunciation’’ from the National Gallery. Poussin was always preoccupied by clarity, making sure that you could see what was going on – and how the artist had worked to make things clear or at least evident. The announcing angel, for example, makes a dual hand gesture, pointing upwards to God and horizontally to the midriff of Mary, who has already been overcome by the news. That is to say, the stages in the announcement have been suspended and shown clearly and simultaneously. At the same time the painter points out that he has had to fit two full-length figures into a tight rectangular space, which he does by showing twisted feet and legs. The whole becomes a set of gestures that can be worked out, with respect to God, the painter and our own experience of coping with cramped space. Continuous time, swirling past, has been interrupted and displayed in static, legible fragments. There is even an open book lying in the foreground as well as a cartouche with various legible details. The whole looks like a kind of glossary of pictorial problems carefully represented. It is that sort of step-by-step quality that I notice in TILT. I read the Inscription carefully (in Poussin), then glance at the open book then turn my attention to the careful ways in which the picture has been assembled. So, I am put through a time process – a deliberated set of small tests and decipherments. By the time I have been in TILT for a while I have become aware of repetition and checking, and of my own body as part of the composition/arrangement. I suppose that this is a phenomenological reading of TILT, more to do with my or the viewer’s grasp of things than anything cultural.
