I've Been Framed/ The Framing Art Question

Hunger show at Gallery Republic

.....thought about framing art today since the Hunger show ended...how the cliché goes about framing work instantly giving it some kind of status, a magical finish...which is true, in a sense. Perhaps framing other things, like writing, has a similar effect; after all, they talk about 'framing an argument' and in the old days written articles were supposed to be 'framed' by intros and conclusions. For professional journalists that's still the rule, presumably.

Frames are containers...and we like containment, perhaps because it amounts to a form of control. Since art jumped out of the frame with Happenings and Performance, though, you would think it's pictorial relative might have done the same but we still want it framed, for the most part. I think the public wants it framed especially, that wooden border signifying 'art', as opposed to just a free-standing/pasted image. That or backed by a frame, of course. Even I looked at an art gallery window the other day, seeing loads of pieces on paper just hanging there and thought "Looks like a mess" before reprimanding my conservative self and declaring it a good mess, a fine mess...to mess with convention is good! It's not a new idea, I know, but years of conditioning are hard to defy.

I framed most of my work for this show. Turned out they were easier to hang, or rather, hanging a frame was a more solid way of displaying than the tape I used for some, one of which dropped off. I should have used better tape. We're conditioned into thinking that to have work in a gallery is the ultimate too. Even in these days of the internet. That one will take some changing. When I joke that the internet is my gallery I'm making a serious point which a few may even take seriously. The fact is that more people get to see your work online than in a gallery. I've had three visitors to this site today, for instance (ha-ha). More, actually, but I don't want to boast.

I'll be posting photos of some of the works above a bit later. LJ used a posh camera and got better pictures. Meanwhile, here's someone looking at our art the old-fashioned way...