Caracas

Museo de Bellas Artes 1995

The Adam Gallery in South London was an amazing project by the artist Adam Reynolds. Adam was an extraordinary artist and an amazing person and despite his severe disability had a constant and infectious energy. He died a few years ago and is missed by everyone who knew him. I am very active with the Adam Reynolds Memorial Foundation that supports disabled artists in the UK.

Because the Adam Gallery was an artist run space it was up to the artist to invigilate. So everyday I sat and looked after the gallery. One day Maria Elena Ramos walked into the gallery saw the work and invited me to make work in her gallery in Caracas. The gallery turned out to be the Museo de Bellas Artes.

I was not able to make a site visit so it was arranged that I would spend a month in Caracas and I would develop and make the work on site. I had a suite at the Hilton and my studio was the foyer in the museum.

I loved my time in Ccs and I have been back there on two other occasions to make work, I am currently working on another project for November 2012.

This project set the tone for all subsequent intervention projects. Working for a period of one month on site allowed me to develop ideas. So although I began the project first in my studio, working with the photographs and plans the museum sent, these preliminary drawings were just a way of keeping busy and keeping focus. In fact my response to a space is physical so I need to have that direct physical contact before I can really develop the project and ideas. Also I respond to other things that are invisible, the music and smell of a place, the buildings and street activities, and of course the people I meet. Some times I wonder if all this business of art making is just a red herring that enable me to travel meet and engage with people.

For the month I was able to turn the foyer of the museum into my open studio. My drawings notes and books were left out everyday for staff or members of the public to look at and thumb through. It was very liberating to work in this way as opposed to the private space of a studio.

I made three cut out works, Door, Window both made outside and Five Columns made in the corridor that connects the two museums. They were all designed as the museo de bellas Artes but when I came to make my work there it was divided the front part formed the National Gallery. Since then they have be once again unified. The architect was Carlos Raúl Villanueva. What I found fascinating is that he made the first building in the 1930’s a neo classical building with columns etc when he was a young man and then made the new connecting building in the 1980’s a new style modernist building when he was an old man. The first was made from the outside in the other from the inside out.

Installing door was a last minute piece. Walking in the gardens with Maria Elena Ramos, the day before the opening, I pointed to the two doors in this utility building and a door step that had no door. I said ‘I could carve another door in the empty space’. To my surprise she said “ok do it”

So another fine mess I got into. Well Lawrence Carroll was also doing an all nighter along with most of the museum staff, so with my assistant Frances who came with me and Ruth who worked for the museum, we made the door piece. I finished at about 10 am the next morning. I had time to go back to the hotel shower and come back for the daytime opening of the show Interventions in Space.

The other work made for this exhibition Interventions in Space was a fictional audio guide made for a painting by the Venezuelan painter Martin Tovar y Tovar, a portrait of a young girl.

There were three books published a book (above)of interviews with all the artists, In English and Spanish. The catalogue of the show (top right) and a pre publication (left) made for the opening.

The show opened in November 1995 and closed a few months later but the story did not end there. The cut outs that I made that were temporary remained in situ for the next fifteen years. Until i received an email from the Ministry of Culture in Venezuela, that the work, Five Columns was in need of repair, and asked if I could come over and inspect the work. This was the beginning of a completely new adventure in Caracas. That resulted in new works called String in October 2010, Caracol in 2012 and in 2012 work in a mixed show called Contaminados and  a solo show of video works at the Los Galpones called Moving Target.

INTERVENTIONS IN SPACE   MUSEO DE BELLAS ARTES   CARACAS

LAWRENCE CARROLL, LUIS CAMNITZER, ERNST CARAMELLE,  GONZALO DIAZ, DAN GRAHAM, JOSEPH KOSUTH,

BRIGITTE KOWANZ, VICTOR LUCENA, BUCKY SCHWARTZ, TERRY SMITH, MICHA ULLMAN