THE M.A. SHOW FROM THE MID-WEST

I produced a 3 room installation with information plaques conveniently placed to 'help' the viewer interpret the work. According to much contemporary exhibition practice people are incapable of interpreting work themselves, so I thought I'd try and help... click here to see the text. There was an awful lot packed into the rooms. Meaning, and the construction of it.

The reactions to this show varied wildly, as anticipated. I completely abandoned the idea of the art object, creating a complete installation. It was disruptive, elusive, provocative. Everyone had something to say about it. I noticed that a lot of people had seen superficially similar work in the press (Takahashi, Nelson etc.) and seemed to have got it into their heads that artists working in this way are basically nihilistic publicity seekers. Maybe this changes depending on the audience, but I was slightly disappointed by this simplistic level of response. This kind of refusal to engage with contemporary practice seems to contain more of a nihilistic tendency than the art itself.

I wanted to disrupt the way that the piece worked by tampering with the processes that a viewer goes through when trying to build an understanding of an artwork. I thought that I had done this in ways that would be perceptible to the viewer, such as the fragments of constructed text and references to exhibition practice.

Thanks to - Martin Humphries, Sol Moxham and the technicians for helping to put the show together, Gerald Cipriani, Henry Rogers, David Burrows, Jenny Wright and John Russell for putting me through a critical theory assault course, Harry Millichamp for taking the photographs and Ivan Morison for designing the programme.