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Following the notion of the artist as ethnographer,
performing the role of collector of his
own gestures, Braddock has catalogued the
collection using the Categories for the
Description of Works of Art‚ from the
J Paul Getty Trust and College Art Association.
As stated on the Getty site: "The level
of specificity at which an art object, architecture,
or group is described will depend on the
practice of the individual institution."
Braddock has developed the standard categories
of documentation such as provenance, materials,
techniques and contexts resulting in an
extraordinarily detailed and obsessive description
in line with the project's overall concerns
of self-reflection with a focus on the methodologies
of how things are collected as well as what.
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1.3 Object/Work –
Type plaster block
2.1 Classification –Term Creative and
Performing Arts
2.1 Classification –Term Ethnography
4.1 Title or Name –Text Push
4.1 Title or Name –Series no. 1
7.1 Measurements – Dimensions 298 X
221 X 82
7.1.2 Measurements – Dimensions –
Type height, width, depth
7.1.3 Measurements - Dimensions – Value
298 X 221 X 82
7.1.4 Measurements - Dimensions – Unit
mm
8.3.1 Materials and Techniques - Processes
or Tec open casting
8.4.2 Materials and Techniques - Materials
– Name Calcium Sulphate Hemihydrate
(plaster 100%)
14.1 Creation – Creator Christopher
Braddock
14.1.3 Creation - Creator – Identity
known Aucklander, New Zealand
14.1.4 Creation - Creator – Role Artist
14.2 Creation – Date 2003
14.2.1 Creation - Date - Earliest Date 10.14,
17 April, 2003
14.2.2 Creation - Date - Latest Date 10.46,
17 April, 2003
14.4.3 Creation – Place 47 Rose Road,
Grey Lynn, Auckland, New Zealand
18.1.1 Subject Matter - Description - Indexing
Terms plaster block
18.2.1 Subject Matter - Identification -
Indexing Terms right hand impression
18.2.1 Subject Matter - Identification -
Indexing Terms maker’s hand
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms achievement
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms expressionism
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms conceptual
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms auto-ethnography
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms absence
18.3.1 Subject Matter - Interpretation -
Indexing Terms phenomenology
19.3 Context – Visual Arts probably
sculpture [?]
19.3.1 Context - Visual Arts - Exhibition
Event pp37-45
19.3.3 Context - Visual Arts - Exhibition
Date 30 August, 2003
19.3.4 Context - Visual Arts - Exhibition
Time 1200-1800
21.1 Related Works - Relationship Type probably
installation
21.3 Related Works – Identification
international visual arts
21.3.1 Related Works – Creator another
artist
21.3.2 Related Works - Creator – Qualifier
probably art school qualification
21.3.3 Related Works - Creator – Identity
any international artist
21.3.6.1 Related Works - Creation Date -
Earliest Date c.1969
21.3.6.2 Related Works - Creation Date -
Latest Date 30 August, 2003
21.3.10 Related Works - Object/Work Type
other plaster sculptures
26.1 Current Location - Repository Name
101 Old Mill Road
26.2 Current Location - Geographic Location
Auckland (New Zealand)
26.3 Current Location - Repository Numbers
pp37-45803
27.1 Descriptive Note – Text cast white
plaster block of rectangular form. The upper
surface of the block impressed centrally
with an irregular concave pattern by the
maker’s right hand being adumbrated
into the material when in a semi-liquid
state. The upper perimeters of the block
slightly raised.
28.1 Provenance – Place Auckland, New
Zealand
28.1.1 Provenance – Identity Winstone
Wallboards Ltd.
28.1.2 Provenance – Date - Earliest
Date 1998, week 27, Wednesday
28.1.3 Provenance – Date - Latest Date
exp date, 1 July 1999
28.1.4 Provenance – Date – identity
batch no. 827304
28.1.5 Provenance – Owner – Current
Christopher Braddock
29.1 Production History – material
– measure plaster 5039g
29.1 Production History – material
– measure water 4.300l
29.1.1 Production History – atmosphere
– measure humidity, 55 degrees
29.1.1 Production History – atmosphere
– measure temperature, 16 degrees C
29.1.1 Production History – atmosphere
– measure water temperature, 31 degrees
30.1 Condition – Damage none
30.1.1 Condition – Treatment none
30.1.2 Condition – Treatment –
prevention keep in safe storage
39.1 Report – Credit Sarah Hillary,
Conservator,
Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
39.1 Report – Credit Christopher Thompson,
Auckland University of Technology, Auckland
39.1 Report – Credit The J. Paul Getty
Trust & College Art Associates, Inc.
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Caspar Millar
The artist smudged into wet plaster slabs.
The impression of his wrists and hands,
over and over. There’s a suggestion
here of the artist as ethnographer, collecting
gestures – a set of body citations.
If ethnography is understood as a published
description based on fieldwork, these impressions
offer the author as the field of enquiry:
a kind of typology of one’s own everyday
anatomy, and an amateur one at that: a deskilling
of the effective plaster cast.
Braddock loves collecting things, is fascinated
by bodies and loves pushing his own into
warm plaster – he never mixes it with
cold water. He once rolled around in wet
plaster at art school. He’s always
had a thing for serial multiples to the
point that he can’t seem to make just
one of anything: it has to be an obsessive
enterprise, over and over again. These preoccupations
share the characteristics of the archive:
inherent structural order; seemingly infinite
multiplicity; serialisation and a desire
for comprehensive categorisation.
What’s of note here is that you might
expect continuity. A collection of images
that exclude interpretation in favour of
narrowed and existing conditions presented
by the collection type. But discontinuity
follows and a plethora of possibilities.
It’s always shocking, how collections
of types of things do more than prop up
similarities, but provoke differences.
Braddock’s work follows a recent pattern
in ethnographic practice that proposes the
study of collection methods and patterns
of display as a valuable area of research
in its own right: how things are collected
as well as what. In this sense, twin notions
of social constructivism and reflexivity
come together: knowledge as the result of
social processes and reflexive methods taking
issue with the collector’s own bias.
It’s argued that ethnobiograhies tell
us stories about what people say about each
other in local settings: the native gossip.
Auto-ethnobiography comes close to gossip
about oneself, not normally for publishing:
one’s own informant. To collect one’s
own gestures is to collate a subjective
archive of bodily and emotional projections.
Set in place here are the artifacts collected
that are themselves the product and imprint
of the archivist.
Photographed and out of scale, the gestures
read outside the body. Benjamin’s well-quoted
exhibition value surpasses any original
gesture, and the multiplicity reinforced
by photographic mediums floods the already
present series of impressions. The fetishised
techno-intervention overriding the hand:
reproaching the gesture of the push, the
smudge of the material no longer the action.
The body’s impression in plaster is
originally tied to death: the last imprint,
but reproduced in positive again as dead-head.
Braddock’s impressions remain concave
and hard to read, a shadow of the body-part
now absent. They might then be reminiscent
of apparatuses of display: the recesses
in which the body might lie. Your guess
what bit of the body. It’s often argued
that photography assists in the death of
its subjects. So are there a couple of layers
here? In this shift from medium to medium
the real becomes an allegory of death and
a fetishism of the lost object, in this
case, lost gesture. While these shifts are
associated with loss of aura, photography’s
monumentalising and reproducing capacity
displaces that cult-value. Furthermore,
two means of reproducibility merge –
cast and photograph – as agents of
loss.
For references in this text see: Buchloh’s
Atlas/Archive in Coles, A. (1999). (Ed).
The Optics of Walter Benjamin. Black Dog
Publishing; Söderqvist’s Biography
or Ethnobiography or Both? in Steier, F.
(1991). (Ed).
Research and Reflexivity. Sage Publications;
Baudrillard, J. (1976). L’Echange Symbolic
et la Mort. |
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