Extract, 2011-14

Incision inside books. Dimensions Variable

When Michael Asher removed the wall dividing Clare Copley’s gallery space from her office, visitors to the exhibition space would have encountered - if they knew the space - a shift in perception of the architecture, and the suddenly visibility of office and stored works, residing in the office space. Those who knew no different, visiting the gallery for the first time, would nevertheless have been struck by the proximity, and visibility of the gallerist, and the capacity to overhear private conversations and the transactions as they took place.

The singular photographic documentation of this artwork, whilst broadly describing the specifics of Michael Asher’s gesture of removal, itself renders solid the gallery space, constructing a new permanency, from a work that was momentary and rupturing. The reproduction image’s passage across the pages of art history instead offer an opportunity to see this rupture afresh. In each found reproduction of Asher’s work, an attempt to imagine the location of the wall is manifest, but removing the projected space it may have taken up. The gallery office is removed, leave, in its place, extracts of discourse and imagery, which can be seen beneath - either echoing backwards to previous pages, or looking ahead to what is to come.