Exhibition: 5 March to 4 April 2009, curated by John Byrne and Kate Taylor
Exhibition at the Art and Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University, Duckinfield Street, Off Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5YD from Mondays to Fridays, 12 to 5pm (filming on Thursdays and Fridays)
In residence at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), 88 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4DQ on Saturdays, 12 to 5pm (filming)
Action Diana is at once an exhibition, a performance and a chance to see the artist at work.
For Action Diana, the Centre of Attention will be onsite for the duration of the show/work to produce a feature film casting the public as the characters throughout.
The exhibition hall becomes a set, a production meeting venue, a group show with other artists’ works selected as the backdrop(Christine Bithell, Christopher Whittle, Sean Harvey, Maggie Lister and others). Fine art combines with film, performance and story-telling in what the Centre of Attention calls a ‘hot installation’.
The contemporary exhibition as a display of inert, finished product has run its course. For the Centre of Attention, the moment of the exhibition is a locus for intellectual and aesthetic play and experiment as well as the opportunity to generate together material to work on at a future date.
It is a productive site. The Centre of Attention’s interest lies in the act of marshalling the elements that an exhibition situation provides and create without physical fabrication. In this instance,to use the audience members as the unruly material in the artist’s hands to make a film which is both a documentation, a series of portraits and an art work. By pushing participation and installation to absurdity the audience has been dematerialised.
The footage produced is a document of a number of performances in the gallery space. The work suggests a notion of the poverty of video art against the wealth of art in the movie.
The work in progress will be screened in the gallery and on the internet daily to further emphasise the battle between artist and viewer to consume one another. The artist consumes the resources of
the infrastructure for its own ends, while pretending it is for your benefit and your entertainment.
www.thecentreofattention.org
