Can the work adapt to the space? Can the space adapt to the work?

Whilst working on my current series of paintings in my studio space, I've constantly been clearing up, organising things into piles and neatly placing them in inconspicuous corners.
To be honest, these acts are no more really than a mere OCDesque nature of mine. However, recently I've realised how beneficial this could be in relation to my work and the space in which it will eventually be exhibited.
Every completed painting, I've carefully displayed for myself on a white plasterboard wall, and with my studio space fairly void of personal trinkets, this is the only visual object I have left for myself to sit and reflect upon.
As mundane as it sounds, this white wall with my painting attached to it could as easily be placed in the Art in Unusual Spaces donated shops in Leeds Plaza Shopping Centre. That's with my hope that our exhibition space will eventually maintain spic and span white walls, and not because I have any great appreciation of the white box syndrome of an exhibition space, but because that's what I've predicted and subconsciously been working towards. God help me if we don't!...Or my painting, rather.
This whole procrastination of your work adhering to the space has been intricately discussed by artist Daniel Buren (1979), who claimed that when a work sits in its studio it is in it's moment of absolute reality. With this in mind Buren brings forward two solutions: either the 'definitive place of the work has to be the work itself' or the creator 'imagines' the place where their work will end up. Although, the former, to me, seems to relate more so to site-specific work, and the latter adheres more to my tactic of predicting white plasterboard walls. Yet, the situation I've imagined is generic, a complete stereotype (Cotter,2006).

But that's the real problem our curating committee are having here. Gathering works from 48 artists that have been mainly resolved before having the opportunity to visit the site, and placing them in a space that, hence the name Art in Unusual Spaces, is not a complete stereotype.

At this point I think the only solution to this dilemma is adhering curation tactics to the decided name of our exhibition, Lost Property, adopting this idea that basically, its all a bit lost.



Buren (1979), 'The Function of the Studio' in: Doherty, C (ed) Contemporary art, From Studio to Situation, London, Black Dog Publishing

Cotter(ed)(2006), Daniel Buren,Intervention II, Works in Situ, Oxford, Modern Art Oxford