Bren­dan van Hek, Lau­ren Brin­cat, Matthew Griffin
MAKE A SCENE

Make A Scene is drawn from an ancient Greek the­atri­cal con­cept, which is to cre­ate dra­mat­ic action to inspire change. To ​‘make a scene’ is to cre­ate a spec­ta­cle, or the basis for a nar­ra­tive. It implies the­atri­cal activ­i­ty ‑for­mal and infor­mal. ​‘Mak­ing a scene’ can also sug­gest a social move­ment; when some­thing is pop­u­larised and fash­ion­able, there can be a ​‘new scene’. And of course it might also mean cre­at­ing an unnec­es­sary dis­tur­bance or ​‘dra­ma’ out of noth­ing; draw­ing atten­tion to oneself.

The trace of an action leaves the trace of move­ment and ges­ture, ani­mat­ing art­works, despite iner­tia or inac­tiv­i­ty. Think of Mike Par­r’s draw­ings, as much per­formed as drawn, or abstract expres­sion­ist paint­ing, or the instal­la­tions of Ter­ence Koh; often the con­se­quences of extend­ed per­for­mances made for objects only. For these per­for­mances Koh’s objects become per­son­i­fied and muse-like. They some­how pos­sess mys­ti­cal pow­ers; art as reli­gious mys­ti­cism, art with aura.

The works that ​‘make a scene’ have deeply active qual­i­ties: sta­t­ic objects per­form or imply dra­mat­ic action, both overt­ly and sub­tly. Sculp­ture and paint­ing inher­it some of the qual­i­ties of ​‘time based’ art, includ­ing mov­ing image and sound works. Through per­for­mance (or its traces), nar­ra­tive, fan­ta­sy and sub­ver­sion, a scene evolves with view­ers nav­i­gat­ing jour­neys in, around and through objects.

Theatricality,‘slap stick’ and make believe are often inher­ent in mak­ing a scene, pro­duc­ing art that is per­haps dis­guised as humor­ous or light-heart­ed, but para­dox­i­cal­ly com­plex and affect­ing. Yves Klein’s Leap into the void or Bas Jan Ader’s Fall into the canal, although enter­tain­ing and indeed ​‘the­atri­cal’, strike deeply into our con­scious­ness via vis­cer­al and emo­tion­al recog­ni­tion. Works such as these are inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal; yet remain intense­ly poet­ic and func­tion as aes­thet­ic meditations.

Draw­ing on diverse ref­er­ences, the instal­la­tions in ​‘Make A Scene’ embody Klein and Koh, as much as abstract expres­sion­ism, geo­met­ric abstrac­tion, pop, min­i­mal­ism, the ​‘hap­pen­ings’ of the 1960s and rela­tion­al prac­tices of the 1990s. At the same time inspi­ra­tion is drawn from music, cin­e­ma, the­atre, lit­er­a­ture, high art and pop­u­lar cul­ture, rep­re­sent­ing a dis­cur­sive strat­e­gy that has come to be a defin­ing mark­er of art being pro­duced by artists of this generation.

Tania Doropou­los, Curator