Galleries Of Light

Tate Modern, London, July 2019

Visits to art galleries can still tend, by their very nature, to be an internalised type of experience.  Art works may (and increasingly do) function out here in the world, in a variety of contexts - both official and unofficial, but the default venue for much visual art still remains the gallery, of whatever variety - with all the associations that may imply.

David Zwirner Gallery, London, July 2019

Despite a growing imperative for galleries and museums to justify themselves in terms of some defined educational function or community outreach, (the sociological implications of which open up entire debates of their own), there is still a sense in which such spaces may act as crucibles of purely self-fulfilling, internal reflection.  Regardless of the agenda of an individual artist, curator or institution, 'Fine Art' (whatever the hell that now means) retains the function to act as a condenser of the viewer's individual thoughts and fantasies.  As long as that still applies, it seems desirable there should remain the possibility of a few 'neutral' spaces, shorn of any function other than to act as a venue for such unprescribed enlightenment.

Of course, I understand that any commercial gallery space has a very obvious economic function beyond the purely reflective, or that the transformation of many subsidised galleries into something identifying as 'arts labs' or educational outposts, implies a greater degree of participatory activation.  But even in these places, it's often still possible to sidestep a particular establishment's primary agenda, and just 'be' with artworks, if only as a peripheral activity.  For many this will sound elitist, socially unjustifiable, or just plain self indulgent.  I'm certainly not dismissing out of hand, the idea that art, and its consumption, may actually operate on various levels of functionality, (often simultaneously).  So, perhaps it's just a case of my reserving the right to decide what I think and feel for myself (in art as in life).  Maybe it's just the desire to retain some degree of subjectivity and personal mood-dependency, as significant components of my own art experience, alongside all the other stuff that might occur.

David Zwirner Gallery, London, July 2019

Which may be why, when a gallery context actually does intrude into my rarified 'art experience', as of course it must (context is everything, really - despite the above protestations), it can sometimes do so as its own variety of transferred aesthetic experience.  With surprising regularity, I find myself shifting focus from the actual work on display, to a portion of the physical environment in which it resides, or to the vista revealed through its windows - only for that to become it's own quasi-revelatory moment.  It's almost as though, rather than the functional imperatives of 'real life' always being applied to art from without - the current might also flow in the opposite direction.  Could it be that, a few meditative minutes spent with the right artworks, can transform one's perceptions of the material world beyond its own boundaries, once it re-intrudes, into something altogether more subjective or dreamlike?

Tate Modern, London, July 2019 (And Below)

Which is all mostly just a very pretentious way of saying - look at these slightly arty photos I took during my last gallery-going trip to London, whilst not focussing on the actual work.