Texts of the Banners and Ribbons

Four BANNERS hung on a stand near the top of the old stairs that led to the exhibition space. Inside the exhibition was a stand draped with ribbonss. This is what was written on them.

BANNER ONE: Two key QUOTES

ILYA KABAKOV: To deprive ourselves of all this garbage means to part with WHO WE WERE in the PAST, and in a certain sense, it means to CEASE TO EXIST. 5 (Ilya KABAKOV: The Text as the Basis of Visual Expression, Ed Zdenek Felix, Pub Oktagon, Koln, 2000, p.302)

ALAN KAPROW claimed that “he wasn’t installing anything to be looked at ... but something to be PLAYED IN, participated in, by visitors who then became CO-CREATORS.” (KAPRO in Jeff Kelly (ed) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Lift, Berkley, 1993, pp. Xi-xxvi)

BANNER TWO: Origins of the WRINKLEY’S PLAYHOUSE

A FAMILY MEMBER suggested that I could make a piece of art out of ‘all that rubbish in the attic, which is going to come through the ceiling and kill you if you don’t do something about it.’

My work tackles INNER CHALLENGES that I share with others.

Attachment to the PAST, fear of the FUTURE, and reluctance to live in the PRESENT moment is what this show investigates at a variety of levels.

KABAKOV’s “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away! Was a new approach to the value of so-called ‘garbage’. Other artists also used memorabilia.

HUSBAND Tony suggested the title. Like me he regards our WRINKLES as trophies, as the map of our life.

You may TOUCH every part of the show, you can MOVE things gently, and RE-ARRANGE them if you think they would look different in a changed order.

BANNER THREE: What does it all MEAN?

This work, THE WRINKLEY’S PLAYHOUSE, invites interested viewers to accompany the artist on a journey from the PAST, through the PRESENT, towards the FUTURE.

Displayed memorabilia express a connection and respect for the past bordering on excessive.

Ambitious technological expressions point to a potential in the future.

Display choices take place in the present.

Viewers are invited to ‘Grin first and think second’.

The paradox of a ‘wrinkley’ being both obsessed with holding on to the past while at the same time enthusiastically playing with a technological future is not without its whimsical aspect.

Enjoy what you see – explore, touch, photograph, but please respect these ‘relics’ that have survived far longer than might have been expected.

BANNER FOUR: KABAKOV Connections

The book ‘The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away’ telling of the life to date of ILYA KABAKOV, gave me my first permission to even think of using what family called ‘mother’s junk’ as potential for art.

Reading that book introduced me to the GARBAGE MAN, Kabakov’s installation ‘portrait’ of a fictional character who kept everything; and to the idea of LABELS as a way of telling a kind of story.

Further exploration of both the work and writings of KABAKOV broadened my notion of INSTALLATION, especially of the idea of creating a space in which to ‘tell the story’.

Other aspects of what I do are very different to what Kabakov does. What I use are MEMORABILIA, objects each selected for keeping; KABAKOV used accumulated objects that just happed to survive. Kabakov’s NARRATIVE is fiction, mine is personal history.

Perhaps it is in his quotation that we are most alike: He say: ART is as a machine for overcoming FEAR. I AGREE.

EIGHT RIBBONS: QUOTATIONS that inspired my work

*** To PRESERVE found and fabricated objects, as well as KEEPSAKES, artistically displayed in this manner ... such objects assume the role of contemporary RELICS, (PUTNAM)

*** ART! Who comprehends her? (Beethoven)

*** DERRIDA introduced the word ‘TRACE’ in the post-structuralist canon, arguing that there are always traces of an ABSENCE in what is PRESENT (Allen)

*** I think you CANNOT IMPROVE on something that is that SIMPLE (Dion on pencil rubber)

*** ... The house is a NEST for dreaming, a shelter for IMAGINING. (Bachelard)

*** ... ART something still going on ... on the WAY, in transit, ...provisional ... UNFINISHED ... (Morays)

*** ... even the most OBSOLETE, low quality items can acquire a sense of SOLEMNITY. (Bott)

*** Without being sentimental I think it’s a kind of cherishing things AS THEY ARE, rather than trying to make them into other things. I deal with fragments of EVERYDAY life and I’m suggesting that a fragmented view of the world is all we’ve got (Hiller)

*** The best thing about the term “PERFORMANCE ART” says Laurie Anderson, “is that it’s so ambiguous. It includes just about everything you might want to do.” (Laurie Anderson by John Howell, pub thunder’s Mouth Press NY 1992, inside front cover)

*** I want to do as I like, invent my own INTERESTS (Judd)

*** ... the necessity to accept the POWER TO FORGET as part of the narrative of remembering: that to live today, now, within the PRESENT, means being able to live with this. (The Archive ed. Charles Merewether, pub Whitechapel ventures, London, 2006, p132)

*** There’s NO RETIREMENT for an artist ... there’s no end to it. (Bono)

*** ... ANDY WARHOL ... an insatiable collector who was interested in EVERYTHING and could part with NOTHING.

*** What you should do is get a BOX for a month, and drop everything into it and at the end of the month, LOCK IT UP. (Warhol)

*** KABAKOV refers to ART as a “machine for overcoming FEAR” (Groys)

*** Hell is like a museum, something between the Paradise of Divine MEMORY, and the garbage can of total OBLIVION (Groys)

*** The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up (Picasso)

I can probably root out the bibliographical details for many of these quotes, if anyone needs them, but it will be quite a task, as I don't seem to have them to hand, so it would be helpful if you only requested what you really need.