Objects from Places We’ve Never Been, 2014

RAYGUN LAB, Sydney, Australia

In response to an invitation to create a solo-exhibition at RAYGUN LAB, an exhibition space in Tawoomba, Austria, I created the experiential participatory work entitled, Objects from Places We’ve Never Been.

The objective of this piece was to facilitate a series of art experience for residents of Tawoomba, Australia. I wanted to challenge the conventional function of physical art objects that constitute an exhibition. Specifically, the process in which art works are created by the artist, exhibited in the public gallery, and subsequently spur contemplation and dialogue by a viewer. In this case, gallery spectators experience the creative act itself. The act of having an experience was the art. The exhibited objects, therefore, functioned as a record of these experiences and were merely artifacts.

I invited willing Tawoomba residents to participate in the piece by following these simple instructions.

1.      Visit and experience a place you have never been to before.
2.      Spend some time in that place.
3.      Obtain a single object of any kind from that place.
4.      Leave, with your object, and promise to never return to that place again.

The objects chosen by the participators were exhibited and constituted the artworks for the exhibition. Short written accounts of the experiences of the participants accompanied each object. The night of the opening, participants each verbally shared the stories of the places they visited, the objects they chose, and declared their promise to never return again.

This piece builds off earlier conceptual works from my own practice, such as Union Square Park: Giving It Up for Life (2005), in which I gave up Union Square park with the promise to never return again, and an interview with Joseph Del Pesco titled In the Conversation (2005).