Ten Obstructions:
an Instagram exhibition by ten Greater Manchester artists,
31st July- 31st August 2020.
Ten Obstructions was an Instagram exhibition which took place @tenobstructions opening on 31st July 2020, with daily posts until the end of August.
‘Ten Obstructions’ is a way of working, a methodology, as well as the title of the exhibition. Each artist identified a piece of existing work – broadly representative of their practice – that they remade in response to two riddle-like‘obstructions’ which they have been set by the rest of the group. Each obstruction had two elements, one relating to how the work is made and the second to the wider set of values and beliefs behind the work.
The – then still relatively unusual – use of Instagram as a platform for the exhibition was a response to three months of lockdown and the restrictions on galleries and the physical exhibition of works.
The opening featured a film introducing the artists and the ideas behind the show. From the Saturday 1st August until Monday the 10thth a short film, posted each day, showed how each artist has worked with the ‘obstructions’ they were given to remake a particular work. The final, remade works were shown from Wednesday 12th to Friday 21st August, with each artist, on their allocated day, posting the original work in the morning, the process during the afternoon, and, early in the evening, the final, obstructed, work. The final week featured more images from each artist and their reflections on the process, what they learnt and how the obstruction helped them to widen their practice.
The methodology was inspired equally by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth’s 2003 film ‘Five Obstructions’ and by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s 1975 Dadaist game ‘Oblique Strategies’. The use of Instagram as platform added another layer of obstruction to the creative process.
The works sometimes slip between media in the remaking – for example Paddy O’Donnell’s sculpture ‘Care’ becomes films and Instagram posts; Maya Chowdhry’s live art piece ‘Peas on Earth’ becomes a poem read over a sound track and Sabrina Fuller’s sound piece ‘Away’ becomes a video.
Sarah Feinmann, who has curated the show jointly with Paddy O’Donnell, says: “The ten bOlder artists – though a cohesive and mutually supportive group – are diverse in our interests and our practice. Through Ten Obstructions the whole show becomes the art work: we are each creating in response to another’s way of working and philosophy. We all found the process difficult at first – and ultimately stimulating and creative.”
Sarah Feinmann Equal Measure
My obstruction was “Equality is the condition of being equal in quantity, amount, value, intensity – bring equality to your work. & A single line”.
I used composted, eco printed and weathered linens I had created over lockdown. It also responded to the deconstructed doilies I had made during lockdown. I thought of the circles as apertures.
The lines came from the circular lines, the ghost stitches, the tassels and the grids. The equality came from the subtlety of colour, the blemishes from being exposed to the elements and the echos throughout the work.
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Jane Fairhurst Hanging Textiles
My obstruction was: Make it a game. The backs of things; turn it over and work on the back
I made some 3D textile pieces, embroidered them and put them together inside out. Then sewed on buttons upside down and attached cords and hung them on tree branches in my garden. I asked my grandchildren to invent a game which they duly did. It mostly involved them trying to bash one another with the textiles….much fun.
Away (2017) is a site-specific stereo sound recording (4’35”) made for one of the women’s cells at Deptford Old Police Station (OPS). The text comes from prisoners’ quotations in official reports on women’s imprisonment.
The obstructions I was given were ‘knit’ and ‘art or illusion?’Knitting – or weaving – sound is what I do, considering how words, tone and meaning intersect and reinforce or contradict each other, and the colour, contrasts and congruences that emerge from their juxtaposition. Previously unused parts of the recordings were included to produce echo, repetition, emphasis – an effect of diva and operatic chorus.
Art or illusion asked for visual elements, so I incorporated documentation of the making of the show, along with some much modified pictures of women prisoners.
A four minute sound piece became a two minute video.
Tina Finch, Fishbowl, Instagram Exhibition 2020.
Obstructions: Framing, Looking through an aperture, Use augmented reality to alter perception of my work.
The “Alienation” painting (Acrylic on board, 90cm x 90cm) was the basis for my instagram exhibition. The figures were painted in a faceless, visceral, genderless, unresolved way. They convey a range of emotions –isolation, fear, confusion, loss. The landscape is one of darkness, industrialised urbanity. The artwork was produced during the 2020 coronovirus lockdown.
Prior to the covid pandemic I visited Bolton Museum aquarium and filmed the red bellied piranha. The fish became a metaphor for being in lockdown – kept behind glass windows, looking out, monotonous, existing in an artificial bubble.
I used the Artivive app. to merge my painting and the fish video to create an augmented reality using the Artivive app. using the internet link https://artivive.com/register/.
“Fishbowl”, became my final exhibition outcome. The results seen by uploading the app onto a phone/computer and pointing it at the “Alienation” painting or by logging into artivive.com and watching the video under “Fishbowl 1” to see the results.
The use of virtual technology and apps. were a whole new way of seeing and producing art. The resulting art was surprisingly incredible and contemporary.
Christopher Rainham
My Obstructions were chaos, colour and deconstruction. I researched chaos theory and looked at the design of the Imperial War Museum North. I tried to use mark making to install a feeling of chaos about my drawing and dropped elements of what I wanted to draw onto the paper to create a random composition
Slow like Tar acrylic conte charcoal and chalk on paper