Rose Garrard: Conversation Series

Rose Garrard: Calgary Conversation (1991), New Art Gallery, Calgary, Canada

Garrard’s ‘Conversation’ series of installations (1991-4) created with the viewers’ participation has had a big influence over me because I feel it overturns the notion of painting as a fixed entity that contains one specific interpretation according to the artist’s intended message. Not only do these interactive pieces foreground the plurality of the viewer/participants’ subjective viewpoints but these become an inherent part of the painting’s making. Thus, the mono-directional flow of information intrinsic to the traditional making of a painting ( artist   ›   painting ›   viewer ) is fundamentally changed into a multi-directional network in which each channel is bi-directional:

Artist       —   painted installation

\                                      ⁄

participant

In fact Judith Matsai writing for Vancouver Art Gallery notes:

“For Garrard, the conversations are central to the work, but the activity of making creates the opportunity and the stimulus for the conversations. Visitors do not gather to witness the artist. Witnessing, on everyone’s part, stimulates the creation of her work.” [i]

It is important to note that ‘everyone’ includes the artist.

In the first installation, Calgary Conversation (1991), it is the painting itself that creates the starting point for her conversations, allowing the public to intervene physically (by adding handprints or returning to the gallery with objects to contribute) and conceptually (the discussions and responses Garrard has from her public stimulate and influence the development of the work). In her later Conversation Series, Garrard took this even further using local objects and inherent aspects of the gallery space as the conversations’ starting point (archival documents about the artist Emily Carr from Vancouver Art Gallery in the case of ‘Disclosing Dialogues’; and in the case of ‘Arena for Conversation’, she had the South London Gallery uncover their Victorian floor that bore the description ‘The Source of Art is in the Life of a People’). In these later installations the viewer/participant becomes the catalyst for the painting’s making. On entering the gallery space, they witness the blank canvas (in this case primed clothing) awaiting their input. It is the public who bring the exhibition’s content as much as the artist herself. In fact, Garrard described her role as:

“learning to listen to what’s being said, not what I think I already know. A process of uncovering what I’ve learnt not to see or hear. Creating a space for listening, for being surprised, for possibility, beyond my own prejudices and opinions.” [ii]

The exhibition space is no longer a ‘mise-en-scene’ of one artist’s knowledge but becomes a shared space of learning for both artist and visitor. She notes one of the exhibition’s outcomes as having helped people move on:

“Unexpectedly this process, the sharing of a hidden private experience with the larger community through art, was occasionally followed at each gallery by an unprompted radical decision to change their own life for the better, to create a more positive future for themselves…” [iii]

Thus, by turning the viewer into a participant and transforming the painting from a visual aesthetic object containing a pre-determined message into a questionable and transitory visual means of two-way communication between artist and viewer, Garrard’s installations created significant, reflective moments that could bring change to the participant’s life.

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[i] Cornerhouse Manchester, (1994) p. 76

[ii] Cornerhouse Manchester, (1994) p. 72

[iii] Rose Garrard, 1994. Arena for Conversations 1994. [online] Available at: http://www.rosegarrard.com/arena_for_conversation.html Accessed: 10/11/2010

Bibliography

Garrard, R., (1983), Between ourselves, Birmingham (England) : Ikon Gallery

Cornerhouse Manchester, (1994), Rose Garrard : Archiving my own history ; documentation of works 1969-1994, Manchester : Cornerhouse Manchester

Garrard, R. (1988), Talisman, London : Louise Hallett Gallery