Making A Scene

So I recently went to see the Making A Scene exhibition at the Southampton City Art gallery. The piece I was most interested in was Gillian Wearing's video; Dancing in Peckham (1994) - Still above.

Basically it was a performance in which the artist herself danced as if in a nightclub, but in a shopping centre.

The work was interesting, especially Wearing's video, which, like the work of Tess and I, is cheeky and makes a comment about social etiquette, she is behaving in a way which is unexpected in the location that she is in, breaking the rules.

What I really got from the exhibition though, was the way in which the work was presented. It was large scale, so Wearing was almost life size. Also the benches for viewing the work were placed at the back of the room and there was a walk through for people to go from the entrance hall of the Museum, to the rest of the exhibition. So people wandered back and forth through the room in which the video was showing. I thought this was beautifully reflective of the video itself and the way in which whilst she was dancing, people wandered past.

It really made me think about the way in which we document and display our work, particularly video evidence from a performance.