Ok, so I didn't blog about this at the time except to say that I went to the art gallery.
A few weeks ago I went to the art gallery by myself and I was freaked out by the art.
Normally art doesn't scare me. I have quite a lot of experience with art history and doing art myself and studied it all through high school so I like to think I am past the point of being scared of it.
Not so. Installation art that you have to walk into is freaking scary stuff.
In particular there's an installation upstairs in Wellington art gallery. It's there *right now* although not for much longer since the exhibition is ending. I can't remember what it's called or the name of the artist, but it's like a little wooden building that you have to walk into. Inside it is like a prison. On the left is a projected moving image of an idyllic landscape, on the right is a glass window that you can look into and see the artist lying on the floor. (It's not literally the artist, but a realistic dummy wrapped in a blanket.)
Seeing the human form freaked me out. I steeled my nerves and went around the corner and there at a computer terminal was another "person"! This was a matronly prison guard reading messages from the artist. Basically I was waiting for the scary fake person to start moving and possibly kill me. There was a door to the main gallery just past her though, so I gingerly edged past and escaped out the back. I checked first that there were no more freaky fake people waiting just outside to freak me out more.
There weren't.
and that's my scary art story. God knows how I'd cope with a wax museum.
Posted by jenni at August 17, 2004 05:00 PM