SPACE IS A PRACTICED PLACE
Video by Keeva Danielle Lough
Investigating anti-work, identity, and occupation “Space is a Practiced Place” was an exhibition at Grant Hall Gallery this spring. The gallery was occupied for 4 weeks in an experiment of escapism, gesture, and performance. The physical place became a territory for escapism, anti-work, and theoretical imaginings.
Through developing rituals of play, GRA 123 became a “practiced place,” a continually occupied and used space for reflection.
This installation was approached through the lens of anti-work; I was thinking through the ways creativity and play are limited by an economy that favors results and success over experimentation and failure.
The main goals around the making of this exhibition were to explore movement in the studio, merge my painting and performance, allow for free-form painting, and explore play as central to art making. I embraced naïvité in favor of sophistication, the abstract and messy instead of the refined and realistic, emotional and physical instead of restrained and distanced.
The result of this experimentation was a 33 foot long painting that wrapped the gallery, hand painted backwards facing text on the bare walls, and a series of mirrors in which to view the work.
