Sketch | Bethan Huws: listening for meaning

Bethan Huws: Capelgwyn

Whitechapel Gallery, 29 January-18 March 2011

2011, oak parquet floor, 550 x 3140 x 17cm

I sat inWhitechapel Piecewishing I hadn't read the blurb about the work before entering.  I did so while trying to ignore the attendants' loud conversation concerning how long it took to ascertain it was water damage (although I am left wondering what was damaged, when, how did they feel about it?).  The combination of being unable to avoid overhearing other visitors' remarks while downstairs in the gallery (He's a joker, he's not a serious person; it's so funny) and being directed to think about 'the experience of space' by the introductory text has given me a belligerent wish to pay more attention than is presumably intended to the experience of trying to experience a 'spatial' artwork while being unable to ignore the aural input of a completely different source.

View of 'Whitechapel Piece', Whitechapel Gallery, by Bethan Huws

I don't start from the position that silence is necessary in order to have the 'proper' experience of this artwork; but I did become (inappropriately) interested in the conversation that became part of the work, on that specific day, in that specific half-hour.  I don't think a claim that the artwork wasdifferenton that day is warranted, but it was particular.  If I continue to assume that I know what is meant to be considered as coming within the scope of the artwork and what is not, I would close off the possibility of the artist's playing with those boundaries.  I've struggled to arrive at any meaning in encountering this work, and so felt that the 'real' experience of being there had to become the broadened object of enquiry.  This perhaps underlines the emptiness of this artwork.

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'Interrupted' version of the introductory text:

Bethan Huwsis interested in stripping the artwork bare, into its most essential parts.[She always played the piano as a child and her ------- was jealous.  When she was a teenager she had a moped]Her work concentrates on small details and is precise in its execution and form.[Her ------- has an older sister, it was really difficult]In the past, she has scratched the paint from a particular patch of floor, laid a carpet in part of a gallery and hand-written onto sheets of paper the tiniest changes in the colours and movements of a lake.  The works in this exhibition continue this[she doesn't like carrying a bike, doesn't like it as an object] exploration of a particular location.  They play with our experience of space[her ------ has a baby and a car, but always makes the attendant visit.  Second attendant is indignant] to create sites for possible contemplation and interpretation.  This is achieved through the work's potential to either project us into another time and space as withBoat, or its ability to subtly change our understanding and perception as withReading Duchamp.

Gallery 8 presentsWhitechapel Piece, an installation[ M------- said 'really?' in the workshop space, about a potential application for ---- -------] work which consists of a raised platform that covers over half the gallery's floor.  The physical aspects of Huws'Boatare playfully echoed['ok, just so you know guys, the gallery closes in ten minutes']in this floor-based work; the horizontal surface of the new floor represents the boat's keel['seventy years is one person's lifetime, you know what I mean?']while the viewer stands in for the mast.  Although visually matching the existing floor, the new structure subtly alters our experience['I'm also third generation genocide', from Armenia, grew up in a stable environment, theArmenian genocidehappened at the same time as the Holocaust*]of the gallery, both spatially and acoustically, creating a disjunction between our pre-existing knowledge of the gallery and the intervention of the constructed element.

* This is not my understanding of events – and I understood 'holocaust' in context as being used to indicate the holocaust of the second world war – but I was intrigued by the earnestness with which this 'fact' was stated.

Note:  I have used dashes in place of certain words because I feel nervous about taking such personal details out of the context of a conversation, however overheard and overhear-able that conversation was.  The final element of 'context' here is that, earlier, I had observed an attendant approach a visitor who had just taken a photograph of a work; the attendant told the visitor that there was 'no photography in the gallery', saying "delete what you've taken".  This is quite a familiar gallery scene, and I think the words – taking, taken – that are so usually used when talking about photography are worth noticing for the contrast with another medium of 'taking' – the pen and paper.  Photography is not allowed, yet I was able to do something arguably much more invasive by writing.