Comings and Goings

Recent Master of Visual Arts graduate, Andrew Newman will launch his new online project Comings and Goings with an exhibition at Don't Look Experimental New Media Gallery. The exhibition will open on Wednesday 25 March, 6 to 8pm, and continues to Saturday 4 April 2009.

The performative project explores the abstract of the daily grind that exists in most modern professions, where people are at pains to exactly explain what they do each day. Comings and Goings is a blog that documents Newman’s studio entrances and exits. The repetitive documentation inverts the actual art object in time and space. Photographs of his entrances are titled ‘Andrew Newman enters the studio for purpose of making art’ and his exits are titled ‘Andrew Newman exits his studio having made art.’ The inversion of the artwork through the framing of its production encourages the imagination of the artwork itself. Drawing parallels with Heidegger’s definition of ‘the thing’ these photographic bookends of moments of time illustrate that an artwork can exist not through the material in which it is formed but rather by the emptiness that is shaped through the documentation of its production. This imagination of the void is possible through repeats in photography as opposed to the repetitive image of video or film because by its nature photography misses moments of time. These missing moments extend the imaginary space, allowing the viewer to participate in the production of the image. As Godard said, ‘A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end.. but not necessarily in that order.’ The documentation in Coming and Goings presents only the beginning and then the end, compelling the viewer to engage with the work and imagine the middle of the story.

Newman further abstracts himself from any acts of production by sending this photographic documentation of his studio entrances and exits to China where an artisan transforms the small webcam images into large oil paintings.

Newman will also be presenting this work at the conference Framing Time and Place: Repeats and Returns in Photography at the University of Plymouth in April.

Image: Andrew Newman, Andrew Newman enters his studio on Sunday, November 2, for the purpose of making art, 2008.