Concept

The following task to be tackled by five children, no older than 8, of varying social backgrounds:

“Paint a picture of the whole world with everything in it. Make it as big as you like, and take as long as you like!”

(The children to work individually and without further guidance.)

Room/space 1

Extract individual elements from each of the results, enlarge them and transfer onto styroboard (over-head projector/acrylic paints). The completed cut-outs are free standing or hung from the ceiling and displayed facing the entrance, parallel to one another, within the largest room of the gallery. At the start, a curtain is drawn across the entrance, after which a cardboard footpath issues to wind in and out amongst the objects.

Room/space 2

Exhibit a large number of children’s drawings and paintings (A4 under glass) on a common subject: Angels.

Room/space 3

Display the five children’s original works. (Framed/under glass.)

The artist (Mr Woods) will choose elements from all five works on which he will base a single large-format painting entitled “Holy Playroom”.

 

Notes

Room/space 1 “Holy Playroom”

The immediate effect of the exhibition is doubtless theatrical. Using collage technique, a larger-than-life, mystical landscape is constructed in which the visitor is invited to explore and react. It is intended that he pass through one or more of a number of further experiences before he retraces his steps and exits via the drawn curtain:

a. Respect.

By placing examples of children’s art in a gallery space normally reserved for a few exceptional adults, they are being presented in a way comprehendible to the visitor who, otherwise, has little time to seek out Art in any place other than on the 'marble pedestal'. The objects and their child-creators are therefore granted a respect they rarely receive in the solemn world of 'grown-ups'.

The artworks produced by youngsters are typically regarded as sweet but irrelevant and are invariably destined - perhaps reluctantly, perhaps after ten years buried in the cellar - for the dustbin.

b. Role-reversal.

Due to the large dimensions of the objects which fill the room (i.e. to ceiling height), the adult visitor is reduced to his formative dimensions and roles are reversed, so that he becomes child-like in an environment determined by the artist-child.

c. Nostalgia.

It is hoped (as with all exhibitions it is hoped) that a degree of wonder is experienced by the visitor as he walks the cardboard path and contemplates the images which confront him. It may be that perceptions and memories are raised from his own childhood, adding to the sense that he has returned, for a fleeting moment, to the Holy Playroom in which his child-spirit eternally wanders...

Room/space 2 “Icons”

In his drawing, the child - as a rule - is unable to avoid being influenced by the standard symbols impressed upon him in his parental, social and commercial educations. Icons such as a smiling sun, a tank with running stick-figures or a telly-tubby are at least passively encouraged by adults in the hurry to impose a comprehensive level of communication skills at the earliest stage. These symbols are necessary tools of expression, later to be discarded (perhaps not forgotten) and replaced by far more numerous and sophisticated symbols.

The angel is one icon which, through its power, its religious/mystical tradition and its ambiguity, retains its legitimacy into adulthood (and arguably beyond...)

Room/space 3 “Re-reverse”

The child's world re-interpreted by the artist.

Just as the child cannot help adapting his art to suit the language of the adult, the artist in this instance cannot resist tampering with the art of the child.

Comment

Each time a human baby is born, art is born with it - that is the principal difference between mankind and all other creatures on this planet. However, during the first period of development the art, like a one-celled thing, is of the smallest possible significance. It matures alongside the host-child as he (or she) investigates, mimics and interprets the world he finds himself in. As the child grows, the art catches a virus-like hold - whether he knows it or not, and whether he likes it or not. When he is a man, he picks the litter that is his art off the playroom floor and locks it in an attic; for he truly believes that there is no place for it in his concrete world. If the man becomes an artist, the litter is placed on a marble pedestal and 'art' receives its significant A. It then becomes his Work (regardless that he be scorned as the fellow in society who never works) and that Work is exhibited in a holy room called a Gallery (or if he is dead, a Museum) where it is worshipped as a Thing of Significance.

(Exactly what turns a 'thing' into a Thing of Significance varies from the point of view of one observer to the next. That is the most significant thing about a Thing of Significance.)

As long as the Artist is still alive his work, being part of him, though it be nailed in an airless, sterile room is a living, expanding thing. When he is dead, the remnants of his Art are his obituary - and the sterile room his mausoleum.

Berlin, 26.2.2001*

*Grant application unsuccessful.
Holy Playroom is therefore
ANOTHER PROJECT WAITING TO HAPPEN!