Collaboration is key to maintaining a healthy arts practice, but it doesn’t always have to be the output. Andrew Small has been making site-specific sculpture all over the country for twenty five years, and for twenty five years it has been varied.
The shifts in his practice are responses to a site, but also to the groups who manage and maintain that site. Whether it’s hospitals or sites of historical interest.
A few years ago, site specific artwork was almost an expected part of any creative practice, but it has become less common. Its lines are blurred by contemporary shifts in landscape art, and the revival of the creative methods of the Fluxus group in the 1960s.
Fluxus, for reference, was basically just artists responding to each other and their space, producing art that crossed boundaries between different methods of production (‘intermedia’ for short). A revival of that same aesthetic and working ethic, has meant that most art responds quite loosely to space and situation in some way, and nearly always through collaboration.
Site specific art isn’t all that different in its outcomes, but it’s less about changing the landscape of art, and more about changing the landscape itself. Andrew Small has done this for decades, so it’s fabulous to see his work compiled into this archival exhibition of the work he’s produced.
The site specific sculptures vary from functional pieces of architecture, that are intended to be played on and in, to beautiful lighting installations. Each is given its own text to add context to the photographs too.
The collaboration I mentioned at the head of this article, with Fiona Stirling, is mostly unrelated to the work downstairs at Egg, but shows how important collaboration is, regardless of the restrictions placed on it.
The pair work together as teaching colleagues, fuelling each other’s creativity by passing objects and half-finished works to each other between lessons. This portion of the exhibition, Grabbing Time, celebrates the act of relinquishing control. In simple terms, artists giving their work to another to finish. The results are chaotic but beautiful multimedia relief sculptures.
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Both exhibitions have closed now, but Andrew Small’s work can viewed locally at Halewood Station, while Fiona Stirling exhibits regularly throughout Merseyside. Follow each on Instagram @fiona_stirling_ and @andrewsmall.form
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith