Creative Connection in Exhibitions
Exploring ways in which exhibitions can inspire comfort and connection with art.
I was raised by artists, which meant that to witness art was never a passive experience. Paint was my first medium - I loved the texture and the process of working on a canvas. To see a painting in a gallery, from hundreds of years ago, I can almost feel the brushstrokes, the process and the thoughts of the artist as they painted. The fact that these things, created with natural pigments by normal people, have defied time and lived such long lives is like magic to me. The artists movements, immortalised for generations.
Over time, this connection has allowed me to feel confident in my thoughts and opinions of art. I can immerse myself and speak my mind without fear. To enjoy and understand art is easy.
I am aware that this is not an attitude shared by everyone. Lots of people are intimidated by this world. From the outside it can seem that there are rules - you must understand things and have the right opinion. I disagree with this. People should be welcome to experience art and think whatever comes naturally to them. However, it is not as simple as telling people to think and feel freely, so how do we encourage this? I believe this comes from exhibitions being an active experience, which blur the line between the viewer and the work.
WHY
Experiencing art can expand our lives in many ways, by introducing us to new perspectives and interpretations of the world. Art can be a tool for sharing ideas, communication, and documentation of histories and societies.
“Our technologies are tools. But our creative works carry the wisdom of the world.
Art is how we justify our existence.”
- David Zwirner, The New York Times
This article from the New York Times explains the importance of art to society. Creativity is so natural to humans, and often works of art contain messages, open to interpretation long after they are created. It highlights the communal experience of art, and how human connection can be found in these cultural spaces.
At a time when so much of life is dedicated to the digital world, exhibitions bring us the benefit of connection and engagement with the real world. It is physical, real and sociable.
The study of Neuroaesthetics has shown that artwork “engages flexible neural networks that are modulated by context, expectations, emotional states, goals, and experience”, explaining that the arts are the basis of our cultural identities. To create and appreciate art is in our nature.
So if this is the case, why is there so much threshold anxiety when it comes to exhibitions? Do people not enter these venues because they aren’t interested in whats inside, or because they don’t feel that the space is for them?
The intimidation that people feel towards the arts is a result of many factors, one of which is a fear of not having the ‘right’ opinions. While one way to combat this is with increased signage and digital interpretation, but this alone can risk adding to intimidation, and reinforcing people’s doubt in their own understanding. By considering an audience’s experience of the exhibition through the curation, you can anticipate how they will connect to the work.
In an interview with Kermode and Mayo, Celine Song, director of Past Lives, discusses her approach to directing her first feature film:
“I think that the other part of it is, this does reveal my theatre background, there is such room for the audience, there has to be room for the audience, to get to the emotional place themselves.” - Celine Song (Past Lives), Kermode and Mayo’s Take
From her background in theatre, Song is accustomed to creating for a live audience. In every step of the creative process, she thinks about how her work will be interpreted and the audience’s emotional response.
This consideration is something that can be applied to many things beyond film and theatre. With this in mind, I want to assess some of the exhibitions I have seen in the past year, and what elements have been successful in capturing my interest as a viewer.
WHAT
There are many ways that exhibitions can work to encourage an active viewer experience, with a few standing out as particularly successful. Some methods of engagement are:
Natural environments / Space: Bringing in natural light and textures can help people relax. This can take away the pressure of needing to understand the work, and reframe the exhibition as an experience of a space. This works best when the art and space compliment one another.
Multi-sensory / Physicality: Adding more senses to the experience can deeply increase peoples connection to artwork. Touch especially can break the boundary for a new audience.
Play / Participation: Physically engaging with the artwork draws you into the art in a way that is not only active, but also fun. Particularly in the context of fine art exhibitions which invite you to become part the artwork.
NATURE AND SPACE
A ‘white cube’ gallery is like a blank canvas on which to start a conversation. It can be a great way to highlight work and allow time for focus. However, it is a model that can occasionally feel isolated from the outside world. Considering the experience of the viewer, we can begin to reimagine ways of affecting their connection to art.
In Sensorium: embodied experience, technology, and contemporary art (edited by Caroline A. Jones), there is an essay titled Kinaesthesia by Zeynep Celik, which discusses the sense of bodily movement in experiencing art. Within this idea, the piece focuses on architecture, and the concept of space.
“Aesthetic experience was not simply a matter of enjoying forms from a distant fixed point; the body that entered architecture’s field of influence was shaken to its bones and stimulated throughout its muscles.”
The essay goes on to discuss the idea that experiencing art and architecture is a physical, multi-sensory experience. The artwork itself is not the only factor. It is also the environment within which it is displayed, and the way that audiences feel in this space will effect their experience of the art.
For example, by combining the ‘white cube’ model with natural light and earthy environments, a viewer can relate the work to the outside world, and thus their own lives.
David Kordansky Gallery in LA discusses the process of designing their space by “creating a constant interplay between inside and out” in an attempt to showcase art as something to be “engaged with, questioned, and related back to the life of the viewer.”
“By dismantling the logic of the white cube and allowing for a diversity of experience, art is relocated at the centre of life” - David Kordansky Gallery, LA
NORVAL FOUNDATION, CAPE TOWN
A beautiful example of a gallery considering space in curation is The Norval Foundation in Cape Town. This museum has several galleries which host an array of exhibitions, and a sculpture garden showcasing incredible artwork among the native fauna of South Africa. On a visit in March 2024, there where a few exhibitions open, with a diverse range of work on display.
Walter Oltmann: Metamorphosis
As you walk into the main hall of the gallery, you first meet ‘Walter Oltmann: Metamorphosis’. These striking silhouettes are displayed on plinths of varying height - ranging from 1 to 7 feet high. The physicality of the sculptures in the space means that as a viewer you have to move to see the art, standing on tiptoes and moving around the plinths to see sculptures initially obscured from view. Oltmann’s sculptures are human forms of insect-like body armour. The works draws inspiration from ancient Chinese burial suits, made using wire and beads. Otherworldly in their appearance, each piece is made up of carefully woven wire, using traditional techniques from African and Western cultures. Framed against large windows which look out towards the mountains of Cape Town, there is a striking juxtaposition between the artwork and the world outside.
Alexis Preller: Mythical Lexicon
In another gallery space is ‘Alexis Preller: Mythical Lexicon’. This retrospective showcases a substantial body of the artist’s work, following his life from 1911 to 1975. An exhibition that attempts to showcase a lifelong body of artwork faces a challenge in holding the audiences attention due to the sheer volume of work, particularly if they aren’t already familiar with the artist’s work.
Mythical Lexicon is captivating. The curation of the exhibition allows you to float between periods of the artist’s life, by separating out collections of themes and subjects in separate spaces, all leading off from a main corridor. Within this corridor is the piece ‘Collected Images (Orchestration of Themes)’ (1952) - an oil on canvas painting divided into 18 equal sections. Each section acts as an icon of a theme or subject from a period of his creative practice. The result is akin to a cabinet of curiosities of the artist’s mind. Displaying this in the central corridor allows the viewer to continually return to it, and connect what they have seen and read within this concise autobiography of a piece. At the end of the corridor, you step out into a high ceilinged hall, separated by angled panels, displaying larger later-in-life works. This space feels like a crescendo of the collection, bringing together the themes you have come to recognise. By the time you reach this vast room, you feel that you know the artist and his mind. There is a familiarity in the artist’s surrealist paintings and wooden sculptures.
Sculpture Garden
The Norval Foundation has an impressive collection of sculptural work displayed in the sculpture garden, which combines the dramatic landscape with the artwork. The artworks are positioned among vibrant levels of indigenous planting, against the backdrop of the cape mountains.
The combination of the natural world with these elegantly curated exhibitions allows the viewer to relax and take their time exploring the artwork. In another setting, the sheer volume of ideas might be overwhelming. However, the considerations of space and nature create an inspirational and thought-provoking experience.
MULTI-SENSORY EXPERIENCE
Introducing multi-sensory elements to exhibitions can increase audience engagement by physically crossing the boundary between viewer and artwork. For example, a ‘do not touch sign’ might increase the exclusivity of art, but having elements of an exhibition that people can touch can inspire them to feel that the artwork is for them, thus increasing connection.
Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere, Hayward Gallery
‘Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere’ uses smaller details to increase the sensory experience for the audience and increase connection with the artists narrative and themes.
Lots of Strachan’s work incorporates natural elements, for example Intergalactic Palace in which the floor was entirely covered in Iron Oxide. In this room the texture of the ground changes to a clay like texture, and is a deep earthy red in colour, which noticeably connects the different three-dimensional artworks together. In the centre is a thatched structure (inspired by those the artist saw on his travels to Uganda’s Kingdom of Buganda) in which there is the sound piece, ‘Sonic Encyclopedia’. In the corner of the room is a stool with a tile made from the dried Iron Oxide which people can touch, along with some pieces of straw like that used in the thatched structure.
Similarly, for the piece Jah Rastafarian with Rice Field (Staked with Pineapple, Shield and Football), a small bunch of the rice grass stems from the artwork are on a stool in the corner of the room, which people can pick up and feel. As with all of the artworks in the exhibition, an information panel explains the significance of this portrait and the symbolism of the various elements of it. The work itself is a ceramic sculpture of Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, displayed in a field of Indian rice grass, laid out in the shape of a traditional African pictogram symbolising authenticity and excellence. In between this shape, you can stand among the rice, up close to the sculpture. The earthy tones of the ceramic, combined with the smell of the rice create a multi-sensory experience connecting you to the piece. For an artwork representing an important historical figure, adorned with symbolic imagery, the combination of the visual with scent and touch evokes the feeling of significance held by this artwork.
PARTICIPATION
Building on the use of space and senses, it is important to look at participation as a tool for connecting audiences to exhibitions.
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern
‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ is a collection of the artists work and ideas, celebrating key moments of her career. Yoko Ono is a great example of an artist who uses participation to energise and engage audiences. This exhibition invites you to realise her artwork in an active way, with the level of participation increasing as you move through the exhibition, evoking a sense of play.
Towards the start of the exhibition are pages of ‘instruction’ pieces, from Ono’s 1964 book ‘Grapefruit’. These simple directions invite the viewer to imagine the work themselves. At the time, this feels somewhat challenging, as though you are missing part of the puzzle. However, these directions act as a warm up activity for the mind, easing the audience into the rest of the work. Even these pieces were active in their expectation of the viewer by requiring you to use your imagination.
Progressing through the exhibition, the art draws the viewer in, inviting opportunities to play and entirely breaking down the barrier between artist and viewer.
In the next room is a screen showing ’Cut Piece’ (1964). This work pulls the audience sharply into the artist’s experience, seeing her brave vulnerability in this performance piece, in which she invited a live audience to cut off her clothing. While at times deeply uncomfortable, Yoko Ono has a gentleness in this performance that reflects the actions of the participants back at them. While purely being an observer in front of this artwork, there is a voyeuristic discomfort that makes you feel like more than just an onlooker.
"To ‘strip’, [Ono] explains, means ‘not to reveal to others’ but to ‘discover something hidden in humans’ and a ‘stripping of the mind’.”
- Exhibition Guide, Tate Modern
After this room, realised versions of the earlier ‘instruction’ pieces are introduced, which people are encouraged to add to. The work begins to invite the audience into the process, becoming physically active, with short actions to carry out.
As you progress through the exhibition, the participatory element of the work becomes physically larger. Near the end of the exhibition is ‘Add Colour (Refugee Boat)’, which began as a white boat in a white room. The instruction for this piece is ‘Just blue like the ocean.’ The piece invites people to reflect on the ongoing refugee crisis and consider the collective impact we can have. A week into the exhibition run the room was already covered in blue, with people colouring in, doodling in gaps they could find, leaving hidden messages on an already blue background. Having creative freedom with a simple direction, the room allows you to play. People stay for as long as they like, adding to the collective political message, having fun at the same time. You don’t have to think, you can just be. The room felt peaceful and optimistic.
Yoko Ono’s Music of the Mind is a powerful example of how an artist can consider the viewer’s experience by inviting active engagement. The result is an inspiring dialogue exploring the ideas and influence behind the work, combining these with our own lives and experiences.
The complexities of her activist movement work transcended time in a way that may not have been possible, had there not been such a physical connection to the work. It is an exhibition that ignites a full range of emotions.
Francis Alÿs: Ricochets, Barbican Gallery
Another exhibition that encourages playfulness is ‘Francis Alÿs: Ricochets’ at the Barbican Gallery, an exhibition showcasing the artists’ series ‘Children’s Games’. Instantly, the exhibition feels both chaotic and full of fun. The main gallery space consists of film installations of varying sizes showing children around the world playing games. Combined with sound installations and small paintings (these were lit with a single spotlight, mimicking the glow of a film screen), the dark gallery is lit up with images of play. Moving around with the help of the exhibition catalogue, you learn the various games created by children in different environments around the world.
A significantly important element of this exhibition is the ‘Playroom’. This is an empty room upstairs, with small round stools on wheels and a circle outlined on the floor. On the wall is the simple instruction
“You are very welcome to play with the low stools. Remember these are not for standing on, and please mind your fingers.”
When I got to this room I stopped for a while and watched a group of children enthusiastically playing on the stools. They were having the best time, with more children coming and joining. They were loud, laughing and chattering, their voices blurring with the sound installations, allowing them complete freedom to have fun.
I stood and watched, thinking ‘this is art!’
Our lives are rich with art in so many ways, with various art forms so easily accessible to us. Film, music, literature, we can so easily enjoy from the comfort of our homes. However, visual art and exhibitions still hold an importance. In their culture, social interaction, and physicality, they offer something different. For people who don’t naturally find comfort in these spaces, there are ways of encouraging connection with the work, which (if we’re lucky) could inspire a lifelong love of the arts.
Some effective considerations in doing this are space, movement, sensory elements and participation. Many excellent exhibitions utilise these to create a full audience experience, in fresh and exciting ways. Art is most powerful when it ignites a feeling in someone, and they find a connection to the artists intention.