Session 1 - The Gallery Visit

The Year 10 Information and Communication Technology class from Swanlea School met Katharine Willis, the artist leading the project, in the entrance area of the gallery. Some were able to sit on one of Franz West's large-scale pink metal sculptures.

Katharine gave a short introduction to the artist and to the hanging Adaptives close to the entrance. She introduced several key concepts inherent in Franz West's work:

Franz West - key concepts -
West wants you to react to his work
- The artwork is humorous and tries to make a comment about the art world
- The artwork is handmade from cheap, everyday materials into abstract shapes
- West makes artwork as sculptures, painting and even furniture - Much of the artwork is meant to be touched and tried on

One or two of the bolder students were encouraged to try out and interact with the hanging adaptives.

Kristine Stiles described this installation in preparation for the catalogue of the show:
The main space of the Lower Gallery will include a range of the artist's ÔPasstucke' (or Adaptives) which West has been making continuously since 1974. These visual representations of neuroses are predominantly made in plaster although early works encompass the bandages and wires that lay around the artist's mother's dental practice. Made in all shapes and sizes, they invite appropriation by the viewer and are meant to be carried around and worn on the body like sculptural prostheses. Producing unnatural and awkward postures, they form the core of West's ongoing anthology of the postures, poses and neuroses of the contemporary human body. With mirrors, enclosed chambers (for private use) and videos showing how they can be used, the Adaptives may rest on the floor, on plinths or hang from the ceiling. As the works are mostly white, the installation will create a sterilised environment, with white walls and bright white (neon) lights evoking a dysfunctional surgery or asylum.

Activity 1
The students were then introduced to a set of smaller adaptives which could be picked up. Videos continuously running in the area showed sequences of people playing, posing and dancing with the adaptives and a curtained-off area complete with a large-scale mirror, parodying the changing rooms in clothing stores, gave further incentive to private play. The students engaged enthusiastically and were invited to work in pairs, recording their participation and use of the adaptives using digital cameras. Students' digital pictures in the Gallery:

A selection of images from those taken in the gallery by students: Sadek, Shujel, Wasim, Hassan, Abdul, Abid, Ruman, Honufa, Aysha, Akikur, Adnan, Fahima, Jameel, Khalid, Bilal, Aminur, Inderpal and Nashir.

West's furniture-based installations create mini-environments for socialising, resting and contemplation. The students explored two other installations besides the adaptives, one involved a semi-transparent hanging flexible mirrored surface with single chairs facing both sides. Onlookers were confronted by their own distorting reflection while at the same time seeing through the mirror to the occupied or unoccupied chair opposite.

In a second installation, featuring a set of black and white patterned chairs which recalled the aesthetics of Mondrian and the Constructivists, the gallery viewer is cast as an audience for a non-existent event. From the viewpoint of an audience the behaviour of other gallery visitors is turned into the spectacle.

Activity 2
As a second gallery-based activity, students were given large sheets of paper which were folded up into an impromptu sketch book. They were encouraged to sketch their chosen adaptives, making notes about how they could be used and how they were made.

Abdul

Fahina

Ahmed

Activity 3
Towards the end of the visit students were encouraged to reflect on their experience and were introduced to the work which would continue back at the City Learning Centre. This included setting a verbal brief for the project - to design and make a small-scale adaptive, using a CAD and CAM processes.

Evaluating the Visit
The exhibition was user-friendly, they could actually engage. The fact that they were allowed to touch goes against the usual gallery requirements. Annabel Johnson

The visit was an encounter and none of us really knew what was really going to happen. It is easy to underestimate a successful gallery visit. It is a worthwhile experience in itself which might make students want to come back into the gallery or other galleries again, to look with interest at something in a newspaper or to pick up on a story in the news.
The full impact of a visit is impossible to quantify. They were engaged in what they were doing. You could see in the students' faces that they were inquiring, looking at things, there was a lot of interaction. Using photography to record each other wearing the adaptives and posing was very appropriate.
Steve Herne