Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Wolverhampton
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
Brief Description
Answers to Questions features John Wood and Paul Harrison’s work from 1993-2011. Organised by Contemporary art Gallery, Houston, it toured to University of California Santa Barbara, H&R Block Art Space, Kansas in 2011 and Frist Centre, Nashville in 2012. It was accompanied by Answers to questions a 218 page, hardback, full colour publication with an essay by Toby Kamps, Chief curator, Menil collection, Houston.
Research Rationale
Harrison and Wood primarily make video work that fuses a minimalist aesthetic with collaborative performance. Citing the playwright Samuel Beckett as a source of inspiration, their recent work focuses on undermining the prosaic of the everyday. Their conceptualised humour, their use of repetition, the momentary, the everyday and spatial boundaries of the studio, references the work of Bruce Nauman and Yvonne Rainer, Joan Jonas amongst others, but with the collaborative edginess of a male-duo such as Gilbert and George.
Strategies Undertaken
Harrison and Wood exploit the technical and aesthetic limits of moving image technology. The use of their bodies and everyday objects are situated and isolated by the framing of the screen and the spatial containment of the image. This facilitates their embodied minimalist aesthetics and their playful sense of immanent self-discovery, involving the spectator in a historical reconsideration of the aesthetics of everyday objecthood, performance and studio production.
