Indelible : 2005
In January 2005 Anstee embarked on a 4 month residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
During this time he executed a live improvised drawing for 12 days, directly onto the wall of the Museum’s Process Room.
The Process Room
West Wing, First Floor Galleries, Irish Museum of Modern Art
The function of the Process Room is to reveal the process in the creation, exhibition and consideration of contemporary art, which are often hidden from the public. The Process Room facilitates access to the ongoing practice of artists currently on the residence at IMMA. The programme is located in the studios adjacent to the main Museum building. Several studios are allocated to both national and international artists and the Process Room is used on a rotating basis to display a taste of what is ongoing in the studio environments.
MARK ANSTEE (UK), Studio 13
Indelible
12th-24th April 2005
In an age of image overload from an ever–moving mass media, the notion of depicting specific details of specific events seems an impossible exercise. Yesterday’s news is altered, surpassed, reinvented through today’s angle on things. Yet, the experience of witnessing human suffering, however far removed, however second or third hand is an experience that is increasingly universal.
“It seems to me that we must all have a personal mental database of images depicting human suffering, ingested from television, film, war-photography or even Art History: real and fictional. With this in mind, I am making an improvised drawing over 12 days directly onto the gallery wall recalling some of the indelible images of human extremis from my own memory bank.”
Mark Anstee’s work has concentrated on developing large-scale temporary pictures through the accumulation of individually drawn motifs made live in public museums and galleries.
Essentially, his aim is to explore the need to remember without the rhetoric of permanence.
