Outside Event

Review of John Marshall's Pennystamps Lecture: Yes. The Space-time Continuum

John Marshall's approach to art began, as he put it, through sculpture. However, he quickly transcended medium and began working along the fringes of many different forms and established realms in art/construction. 

His lecture primarily focused on his continued work with artist in the Michigan area. But he hails from Scotland (with an awesome accent). The work he has been doing here presents are really interesting approach to communal spaces. One of the pieces he pointed out was an installation in Detroit made out of beach balls and LEDs. This structure was meant to be interacted with much like how my group project planned to have our Water Street Sign interacted with (meaning, however the public wanted). This type of structure challenges the precepts of sculputres--which are normally static and non-interactive--for the purpose of engaging with passersby. These transients stop to observe, but are drawn into playing with the object and engaging with a community of people.

He admits that his work is meant to engage with play and humor. He wants his art taken seriously, but not in an alienating way. His project on post-apocalypse shelters highlights his humor in a very dark, but meaningful way. He constructed a "bug-out" tent, which is to avoid being seen by drones. He set up this installation at the abandoned airway which at some point in its history housed the Enola Gay before and after its fateful trip. He wants people to be aware of space as a functional site, but also as a historical jump off point for work that is engaged with social histories.

The best part of his presentation was his ability to flux between academic and application. He wants his art to be applicable to modernity, but he is aware that there is an academic tint to all of his work. He diagrams this dichotomy in a very interesting way. He plotted lines which represented things like architecture and construction, sculpture and building, etc. He then detailed in seprate lines where these things no longer represent one or the other. These liminal spaces are the places in which Marshall's art exists. His lecture was very enlightening and his work engaging. I took a great interest in his development as an artist and would like to see the same approach in myself.