Well, as just about everything that might’ve gone wrong has gone wrong in the run up to this exhibition, I wouldn’t have been too suprised – disappointed, but not surprised – for this evening’s private view to be a complete disaster. In fact, it wasn’t even a partial disaster.
But we came very close. For a start, only about half the pieces I’d planned on were actually ready. Then all three of the computers (I’d managed to get three eventually, though one was my laptop which may have developed irritable vowel syndrome and has to have a nap every forty three minutes) – decided to do interesting things. Or rather, uninteresting things that required a computer expert to sort.
There were also supposed to be balloons, filled with poems (words from poems). At 10 to 6, we had about three. Then one burst.
At least we knew that the idea worked: bits of poem dramatically everywhere. Luckily my son Owen and his friend Marion arrived, and with enthusiastic Ellen, a very helpful volunteer who had been sticking poetic fragments to walls all day, they set about a production line under the control (more or less ) of Carrol, my wife. Soon we had balloons exploding all over the place.
At five to six, we had none of the texts on the walls, either. These were pretty critical as (a) they summarised the exhibition, (b) they directed people to particular elements of it, especially what they might get out of the different rooms and (c) they were about the only straight poems, by me, in the exhibition. It was then that John discovered he couldn’t cut the foam board without spreading ink on the texts from the steel rule. And we only had a single copy of each text.
Hey ho!
So, five minutes into the Private View, then ten minutes, I was still hanging texts. People were beginning to arrive, milling around, asking me questions.
But the office wasn’t ready. Marion hastily rewrote the interactive poem on the whiteboard. I hastily posted the few “poems as office objects” that I’d created. I hastily scattered balloons around the white space of the main hall (which looked absolutely beautiful, by the way, in its meancholy drapes of quiet white).
Then there were people milling everywhere. Drifting in and out.
“Is it okay to walk on the stones?”
“Yes, it’s what we want, you’re to change the exhibit as you walk within it.”
“The audio is great, but I’d like to sit and listen. I need time, just to listen to it. I’ll have to come back again.”
Some people came and read the poems on the walls, sat in the lounge, read books, chatted. Some wrote a little in the visitors’ book, or played with the poetry dice, made lines of verse. (We need more).
Some, it seems, walked off with the odd stone. But Katherine is alright with that: it’s an interaction. The point is interaction. We want people to make their own sense from the exhibit.
“When will you be making the DVD? We’d like to listen to the whole thing.”
Bang! Balloons – in fact, poetry – exploding at random moments. Another point – these were events of random moment. Some people got some of it, some made connections, some were a little mystified – I guess the computers were the big mystery “What’s going on there?” – some fascinated, some saw the overall ideas (make your own connections, play with words, use random tools to make personal meanings, find the links, think about women and war) – some were moved, just a little, by the war poems, the gradual accumulation of sounds and memories.
Apparently one visitor said it was the best exhibition they’d seen at Bank St. That is amazing, if really the case. This is the first time in my life I’ve done anything like this; and is a pretty unusual opportunity for a poet, too, to have a gallery of rooms built up around his work.
And not to have the work (well most of it) directly there, either. If there’s one thing you’d expect to see in a poet’s exhibition, it’s surely the poems he (or she) has written. Well, there are some here by mw: I haven’t gone so far as to eliminate myself entirely from my own exhibition. But only eleven are easily discoverable: the five created for the White Space, and six in the leaflet (you can take it away, it’s free. Free poetry!) The rest are deep in computers or scattered amongst seven thousand slates or slashed on TV monitors, or spoken fleetingly. Or hidden, in artefacts in the office, or the toys in the Lounge. You can find my connections, or make your own.
I think the audio-visual installation went down well. There were too many people much of the time for it to be best appreciated, I guess, so I hope and expect people will return to listen again, and for longer.
But undoubtedly the hit of the exhibit was the Garden of Stones. Katherine has produced something wonderful there. People came back to it again and again. How often does an art exhibit do that? My youngest visitor, Dominic, who is (I think) not yet two (I hope I’m right, Lisa) was fascinated by it. People made little cairns, arranged the stones into poems, found words or stones they liked and put them aside, or on the windowsill, perhaps arranged in lines.
Wonderful.
You must come and see it, if only for Katherine’s Garden of Stones. It is spot on for my intent in these works, and it uses my 70 poems, but it’s beauty and richness is entirely hers.
Unfortunately, the best photo I have is still mediocre, but I’ll post better ones when I have them:
