SHAPE 2017 TateExchange Book FINAL Draft - Flipbook - Page 23
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The Art of Exploring
Liz Porter
Whenever I walk into an art gallery or a museum, or go around a castle
or a sculpture trail, I always get the urge to play. If an exhibition has been
described or I’ve had a chance to touch objects that’s great – of course I’m
interested in the artistic or historic perspective, but the urge to play is usually
bigger. My mind races thinking about how I might engage, either alone or in a
group. I start dreaming about the kind of things I might do:
What if you could bring statues or objects to life through imagined
conversations? What if you could recreate their shapes with your body, even
become them for a day? What do they sound like? And so on.
What if a creative response is used to back an artistic intention, or woven into
the fabric of a historic trail as part of an audio description guide? It’s rare for
this to happen … but when it does, I’m hooked.
How does your life story influence how you respond? At the “Audio
Description: Art of Access” conference held at Royal Holloway University in
October 2016, acclaimed audio describer Louise Fryer said in her keynote
speech, “It’s not enough to just say what you see, we are all different” – an
accurate statement that is subject to artistic scrutiny and real consideration
when choosing the language of audio description in the art of painting with
words, across all art forms.
But what if we turn the sentence around in the art of exploring from a
creative response? I would suggest it’s totally acceptable and relevant to say
what you see; say what you feel or hear; to engage through touch and smell;
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