A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End
- Submitting institution
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University of Northumbria at Newcastle
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 26558864
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- March
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Arts Council England (ACE) awarded Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) funding for Tatham and O’Sullivan to create their 30th major commission. Drawing on their 25 year scrutiny of the values and behaviours of contemporary art, the research took the commission’s context as both site and focus of the enquiry.
The enquiry was positioned in relation to MIMA director Hudson’s proposition that it be a “useful museum”, drawing on Bruguera’s concept of Arte Útil. The research asked what MIMA and its audiences expected from contemporary public art in Teesside. How were existing representations of Middlesbrough perceived and what approaches could make new ones meaningful?
The research is located in the field of context-specific contemporary art practice (Dellar, 1999; MacKay, 2015) and debates and practices of public art (Freee, Acconci). Strategies of institutional critique (Ondak, 2003; Fraser, 1989) underpinned the approach, allowing for a new aesthetic mode of public art-working circumnavigating those of Arte Útil.
The enquiry used site-specific methods, including archival and local historical research, and auto-fiction. The approach was collaborative and discursive, with formal and informal encounters with staff and visitors engendering iterative processes of enquiry. Located research methods were transformed using satire and absurdity to create disruptions and displacements within and around MIMA in the form of publicly-sited sculpture, photographs, publication and associated events. MIMA and its audiences were offered a “Teesside imaginary”, a complex work engendering an entangled relationship between MIMA, its audience and Middlesbrough.
The exhibition fulfilled objectives for both MIMA and Middlesbrough Council and took a key role in Tees Valley’s bid for 2025 City of Culture. In response to an initial maquette, Middlesbrough Council provided an additional £10K to realise the central sculpture at a more ambitious scale. MIMA acquisitioned the artwork into their collection after extending the exhibition by six months.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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