Install Error - Placing ourselves within art.

Installations are perhaps the form of artwork which draws the most ire.

Often seen clipped, cropped, and out of context on a 5 second reel, they are used to deride "contemporary" art by press & public alike. This misrepresentation of the artform leaves many to disengage with not just the medium, but contemporary art as a whole.

(which i do not think is wholly accidental, not only is outrage more profitable, but by deriding art in the eyes of the public, the powers of the day weaken the cause of all artists and the pursuit of art as anything more than 'pretty' saleable motifs)

Yet installations carry with them some of the greatest impact of any medium. They do not rely on drawing the viewer closer to the wall, they metaphorically remove the wall, and often literally surround the viewer, placing them within the artwork itself.

They demand exploration, lest you wish to cover your eyes and ears and blindly stumble through the space they occupy.

It is this occupation of space at beyond a canvas that can pull on deep rooted emotional and physiological responses through a myriad of everyday objects and subversions of our usual behavioural patterns. Whether that be in the path we are forced to walk around and through work, or in the way they can manipulate light to alter our vision. It is one thing to see a canvas painted in vibrant yellow, it is another to be immersed Olafur Eliasson's 'Room for one colour' where the only light is yellow.

A painting of an empty table with extravagant place settings may say very little, or cultivate a mood vastly different to a room solely occupied by that same table as is seen in 'The Dinner Party' by Judy Chicago.

So it is no wonder that when frozen in photos, or caught, cropped and contained in a portrait video with awful AI voice over, that these works lose a great deal of their impact and power. Yet judging these artworks in this way is foolhardy, that video on your phone is not the artwork, that opinion piece in the tabloid is not the artwork, the artwork is the experience, the location, and the audiences presence.

It is vitally important that we do not lose our ability to step back from the screen, to ask, and in failing that to demand context. Lest we judge creation for what someone wants it to be seen as, rather than what it is.

Olafur Eliasson's Room for one colour (1997). Installation view at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 2015