A Proposal To Ask Where Does A Threshold Begin & End
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Tatham1
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesborough
- Brief description of type
- Single output with contextual information
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- 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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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ACE awarded the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art funding to invite 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 research was positioned in relation to director Alistair Hudson’s proposition that MIMA be a “useful museum”, drawing on T. Brugera’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 enquiry used site-specific methods, including archival and local historical research and auto-fiction. The approach was collaborative and discursive; formal and informal encounters with staff and visitors engendered iterative processes of enquiry. Located research methods were then 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.
This hybrid methodology scrutinised the aesthetic behaviours of MIMA’s curatorial approach and the art practices occurring within this. Strategies of institutional critique (R. Ondak, C. Evans) underpinned the approach and were developed to propose a new aesthetic mode of public art-working circumnavigating those of Arte Útil. MIMA and its audiences were offered a “Teesside imaginary”, multi-modal work combining local histories, images and motifs to engender 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 artwork at a more ambitious scale. Additionally 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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