Fulcrum: Ontology, Fulcrum: Epistemology and Fulcrum: Folly
Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position: it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them. Merleau Ponty
Issues of perception and the implications of our considering these are addressed by the Fulcrum installation project. This series of installations by Marie Sierra-Hughes, Ann-Maree Reaney, and Colin Reaney spanned a three month period with each artist having a month's residency/exhibition at the Artsite gallery. The second installation (by Ann-Maree Reaney) picked up on concerns of the first (by Marie Sierra-Hughes) by physically retaining certain of its elements and continuing along similar discursive lines. The third installation (by Colin Reaney) retained elements of the first and second. In this way the installation project was a partially collaborative work which acted as an accumulated response to the site. It thereby questioned traditional notions of authorship which rely on tracing an originating intention to a single source. The idea of text as production (the result of the interaction of artists, space and viewer) is advanced in the Fulcrum works by their being built up through and across time. It is the life of the exhibition across three months and in the publication of documentation of the installations that generates much of its interest. We consider the series both in terms of the time of its viewing and the time of its making. Just as the series represents an accumulated response to the space, our response to the works is also accumulated across time. In this way the works are constituted both synchronically and diachronically in their making and reception