STUDY: STUDY OF SHATTERED RED TILES WITH OLD BRICKS...
Transcript of STUDY: STUDY OF SHATTERED RED TILES WITH OLD BRICKS...
STUDY: STUDY OF SHATTERED RED TILES WITH OLD BRICKS AND DECAYING WOOD, BOYLE FAMILY
STUDY IS THE GENERIC NAME for a series of focused case-studies of works from the collection. It
involves a single work which is studied in depth, from its techniques, origin and history, to its position
in the artist’s practice and the contemporary debates. The study is made available, in a folder on the
bench.
AN ARTWORK IS A SYSTEM that cannot be reduced only to an object or an index (certificate,
instructions, etc.). It also includes the histories (material and conceptual), the trajectories (physical
or virtual) and the narratives (past or to come) generated by the artwork: this is what this programme
will research.
TO STUDY IS TO DEvOTE TIME and attention to a particular subject, to acquire knowledge. It can also
refer to a piece of work done for practice or an experiment. It is this sense that we would like to
pursue – not the transmission of knowledge or the act of contemplation, but rather an invitation to
act.
STUDY IS NOT AN ATTEMpT to capture or seize but a methodology of encounter and the insistence on
the provisionality as both form and content within the process of research. It is an exercise to respond
to the infinite demand of the work. Not to bring forth any historical truth but to enter into a dialogue
with the work.
IN THIS SENSE THE STUDY IS NOT FINITE, but demands the reader to take up multiple positions and
viewpoints. More than anything, it asks the viewer to engage with the artwork by, at least, spending
some time with it.
STUDY OF SHATTERED RED TILES WITH OLD BRICKS AND DECAYING WOOD is a sculptural
work by Boyle Family from 1973/74 with materials recorded as: mixed media, resin and fibreglass. It
measures 183 x 183 x 11.5 cm, and is signed and dated on the reverse with: ‘Study of Shattered Red
Tiles with Old Bricks and Decaying Wood 1973/74, Boyle Family, Joan Hills, Georgia Boyle, Mark
Boyle, Sebastian Boyle’. This work was acquired for the David Roberts Collection from the Fine Art
Society, London in 2005 and was included in the exhibition Works from the David Roberts Collection
at David Roberts Art Foundation, Fitzrovia in 2008, together with works by Doug Foster, Anselm
Kiefer, Hyungkoo Lee, Antony Gormley and Gerry Judah.
THE WORK pRESENTS a randomly-selected, square section of West London ground, featuring red tile
paving with parts broken into fragments, and the accompanying dust and detritus.
Shattered Red Tiles with Old Bricks and Decaying Wood is an example of an Earth Study, the
project for which Boyle Family is best known. Earth Studies were started in the early 1960s by Mark
Boyle (1934-2005) and Joan Hills (b.1931), and have been continued in collaboration with their two
children Sebastian (b.1962) and Georgia (b.1963) ever since.
Mark and Joan’s earliest works include happenings staged in Edinburgh, performances at the
ICA, London and light projections with Soft Machine and Jimi Hendrix, as well as their early junk
paintings. These diverse early works were the beginnings of their pursuit to make works which
encompass the whole of reality. At the occasion of an exhibition at Indica Gallery, London in 19661,
Mark Boyle stated ‘I am not trying to prove any thesis and when one is concerned with everything,
nothing (or for that matter anything) is a fair sample. I have tried to cut out of my work any hint
of originality, style, super-imposed design, wit, elegance, or significance. If any of these are to be
discovered in the show then the credit belongs to the onlookers.’
Re-connecting art with the reality of everyday life, as opposed to a discipline that was self-referential,
was a general concern for many artists in the 1960s. Most galleries in London at the time showed
abstract paintings and stylised works concerned with formal aesthetics; but Boyle Family, amongst
other artists, became disillusioned with this art world context and wanted to challenge routine
perceptions or preconceptions of the world. Everything was worthy of study and ‘in the end the only
medium in which it will be possible to say everything will be reality’.2 Other practices concerned
with urban detritus, the mundane and the environment also came out of post war and 1960s
countercultural movements. Hamish Fulton, Richard Long and Robert Smithson all explore the
relationship of the individual to their environment and to everyday materials. The 1969 moon landing
and the first photograph of Earth from outer space from Apollo 17 in 1972 brought about a significant
1 Indica Gallery was located on Mason’s Yard (off Duke Street), London and was co-owned by John Dunbar, Peter Asher and Barry Miles. The exhibition ‘Presentation by Mark Boyle’ took place from July to August 1966.2 Quote from Mark Boyle, ‘Happenings’ ICA Bulletin , June 1965, no.147
shift in the consideration of our position on, and our relationship to the Earth. Artists, perhaps with
this new perspective, followed divergent paths. Some used land as an artistic medium, whilst others
were inspired to pursue a pure aesthetic experience of the world, liberated from materiality. For Boyle
Family however, neither of these strategies was employed. To maintain objectivity in their practice
they followed a scientific approach: an archaeology of the contemporary 3.
IN 1961 Mark and Joan started to work on assemblages, for which they used material found on vacant
lots and demolition sites in London. Wooden frames, bicycle wheels and other junk items were glued
to wooden boards, which were also found on these sites. The first Earth Studies were made in 1964
on Norland Road in the Shepherds Bush area. During one of these visits, they came across an empty
frame from a broken television set. The initial position of the frame contained a composition with
a unique quality. They tried subsequently to position the frame on the ground and found that this
quality could not be reproduced, the resulting image appeared contrived. This led them to throwing
the frame, trying to eschew choice or aim, and they found each time a perfect and perfectly neutral
image. From this moment on they decided to include chance rather than choice in order to isolate
different sections of the ground. Random selection provided a way of focusing attention without an
artistic agenda.
In these early works, Boyle Family created Earth Studies by transferring as much real material as
possible utilising a string grid (similar to that used in archaeological drawings) to a board, using glue,
resin and screws. Their production techniques significantly changed between the first Earth Studies
and the methods used in Study of Shattered Red Tiles. They significantly refined their methods of
production, and subsequent iterations were more accurate and objective, each time making technical
discoveries, which were incorporated into the process. The sites in which existing surface elements
could not easily be transferred to the work led them to use resin to fix the surface material. They were
later able to refine the process with the introduction of fibreglass. Their exact methods, however, can
only be speculated upon as Boyle Family have never explained them: they describe the discussion
of technique as distracting. The collaborative process and cooperative manufacture, along with a
secretive approach to production methods, diverts attention away from the craft qualities and any
artist figure as personality. We can be amazed by the verisimilitude of these earth probes, but any
kind of realism is a by-product of presenting reality itself.
IN THE LONDON SERIES (1967 – 1970) the rectangle was no longer thrown on demolition sites that
Hills and Boyle chose, instead they acquired a map of the area surrounding their flat on Holland Park
Avenue and threw darts at it to arrive at their locations. Every point on the map had an equal chance
of being studied.
3 The Institute of Contemporary Archaeology was inaugurated in 1966 at its first event, ‘DIG’. Boyle Family sent invi-tations out to friends including John Latham and Jasia Reichardt. Attendees were taken to a cordoned off area, which used to be an old garden statue factory. Many were dressed in their Sunday best but all were instructed to dig. The multitude of statue fragments were then taken to Hills and Boyle’s flat and later shown as an exhibition.
THIS pROCESS WAS DEvELOpED INTO THE WORLD SERIES (1969 – ongoing), for which friends
were invited to their flat and asked to throw darts at a world map whilst blindfolded – perhaps the
intention was to remove limitations imposed by the London map. The sites from the World Series
would also draw together aspects of their investigation into reality as multi-sensational presentations.
The actual earth, and evidence of the plant, animal and human life, was collected and put on the wall
for examination.
Study of Shattered Red Tiles was made during a significant period in Boyle Family’s chronology. It
was made after they had begun the London and World Series, and had considerably developed their
methods for selection and execution of the studies. However, it was still a few years prior to them
representing Britain at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1978. The work is not part of a particular series
(London, World, Docklands etc), instead it belongs to a group of studies that were not systematically
made. Rather than arriving at the location in the method detailed for the World Series, the work
Study of Shattered Red Tiles, as an individual Study, had its location determined to a degree by
convenience of access to a site or because they had been granted permission to a location. Once on
site, however, they would still follow their method of selection by throwing a carpenter’s right angle,
to determine one corner of the square for the exact site of the Study.
BOYLE FAMILY’S STUDIES ARE NOT METApHORS, signs or pretenders. Although we might be
puzzled by their verisimilitude, it is clear that these are artworks and not sections of ground that have
literally been dug up. Their operational aesthetic is that of a painting hung in a gallery, sometimes
with very precise lighting instructions to heighten the sense of crumbling masonry or architectural
elements. There is a shift from the horizontal to the vertical, from the ground to display. What was
once passed-by or forgotten now becomes a point of concentration in which we approach these rarely
acknowledged fragments of the world. We suddenly find ourselves studying and paying attention
to the colours of gravel, the shape of a broken glass bottle, the perforations in tiles and the lines in
decaying wood. What they suggest is not the salvage of the past, but fragments recovered from the
detritus of the present. They restore to our attention that which has been discarded or neglected;
the quotidian that we tread on without consideration. The aim is not to elevate the mundane to
the magnificent, rather, to change our attitude to all facets of reality. We are asked to reconsider
the distinctions we make between what is discarded or ignored as insignificant, and that which is
regarded as vital or essential. ‘The most complete change an individual can affect in his environment,
short of destroying it, is to change his attitude to it. From the beginning we are taught to choose, to
select, to separate good from bad, best from better. Our entire upbringing and education are directed
towards planting the proper snobberies, the right preferences. Ultimately these studies are concerned
with everything as it is.’4
4 Mark Boyle in Control Magazine, No.1, 1965
ALTHOUGH THEY STRIvE TO REpLICATE REALITY as much as possible, Boyle Family acknowledge
that every work is a failure, inasmuch as only the original site is perfect. They know that
selections can never be truly random and that it is impossible to eliminate themselves and their
own subjective influences from the work. They recognise that the very act of isolating and recording
changes the meaning of what is introduced to our vision. Studies ‘present as accurately and objectively
as I can manage certain sites randomly selected, isolated at one moment. The next moment the
sites are different. In half an hour they are transformed. And you have the situation as it was at that
instant, perhaps already partially invalidated by its permanence and its isolation.’5
There is a sense of timelessness within these works. It is difficult to distinguish early pavement
studies from more recent works. Looking at Study of Shattered Red Tiles, one could think that it is
the reproduction of an area of ground from the 70s, but it could just as well be a scene 30 years’ from
now. ‘This is one of the problems with science fiction. It always seems to see the future in terms of the
dramatic and the exceptional, when it will of course be as ordinary and everyday as the present is.’6
Boyle Family inadvertently produced an archive of the contemporary environment. The archive, as
with these works will never approach completeness. Rather, they are distinct points or fragments
which, however neutrally assembled, can never present a totality. Gaps between the sites are
fictionalised. What we are asked to do is simply to examine these points and to engage with them.
5 Mark Boyle quoted in J.L.Locher, Mark Boyle’s Journey to the Surface of the Earth. Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Stutt-gart, 1978. P.57-586 Mark Boyle quoted in J.L.Locher, Mark Boyle’s Journey to the Surface of the Earth. Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Stutt-gart, 1978. P.79
INTERvIEW WITH SEBASTIAN BOYLE
SANDRA pUSTERHOFER: My first question regarding this work ‘Study of Shattered Red Tiles with Old
Bricks and Decaying Wood’ refers to the reverse. It is inscribed as 1973/74, Boyle Family, Joan Hills,
Georgia Boyle, Mark Boyle, Sebastian Boyle. So at the time of production you would have been 11 or
12 and Georgia a year younger. I believe you didn’t start to exhibit as ‘Boyle Family’ until 1985. How
much were you and your sister involved at this early stage?
SEBASTIAN BOYLE: Georgia and I started working on the pieces from an early age, we have always
resisted putting a date on it, because it was such a natural process, but maybe we were six or seven.
One thing to remember is that Mark and Joan didn’t go to art school, so they hadn’t got into the
idea that they needed a separate studio. We would come in from primary school and they would be
working on a piece and Mark would call out ‘Christ this bucket of stuff is going off’ and it would be all
hands on deck to use the resin before it went off. We couldn’t afford to waste a bucket of resin.
Sp: The work was bought for the David Roberts Collection in 2005 from the Fine Art Society, but we
have no records for the work prior to this date. Was it produced for a particular exhibition or do you
remember if it was displayed anywhere?
SB: The piece was bought by the Fine Art Society at Christie’s South Kensington in a 20th Century British
Art auction, on 30 June 2005, lot 379. They then exhibited it at the British Art Fair and in a 20th
Century exhibition they put on in the gallery the same year, from which they sold it to the David
Roberts Collection. Our archives are still being sorted out and there are quite a few gaps. It’s history
before then still has to be pieced together.
Sp: You’ve mentioned that Boyle Family is not a democracy, it’s four feuding dictators. We know as little
about your collaborative working process as we do about your techniques of making the works. Does
each one of you have a particular role in the fabrication process?
SB: No, we divide the work up equally and all do all aspects of the work.
Sp: Study of Shattered Red Tiles is a 6ft x 6ft square, which seems to be the size for most of the larger
Studies. For works that are very labour intensive it seems quite a large surface to produce, how did
you decide on this size? Was it important to you that the works have a physical presence in the space?
SB: Yes, Mark and Joan did think the work should have a physical presence. The first point is that they
chose the square because it seemed more neutral, not portrait or landscape. They also said that at
the time there weren’t that many square paintings, so the square differentiated them from many of
the works being made at the time. They made smaller pieces, but 6’ x 6’ became the main size, I think
because it had the physical presence and was still relatively easy for two people to carry. The other
practical consideration was that having not gone to art school they hadn’t got into the habit of having
a studio. They were working at home and most doorways are 6’6”, so the 6’ size meant they could be
carried through doorways. A very important factor, of course.
Sp: How do you decide on the orientation of the work on the wall? Is there another random process
involved or do you make an aesthetic choice?
SB: There isn’t another random process involved in deciding which way they should be hung. We are
happy for the works to be hung any way on the wall. Indeed in many ways we think it is good to rotate
them in hangs. It stops you seeing them in set ways. Some pieces do have arrows on the back, but this
is mainly because of the pressure you are put under to specify a ‘right way’ up. It is easier for many
museums and public collections, as they get complaints if works are hung alternative ways...
The exceptions to this are vertical cliff pieces, which we think should be hung the same way the cliff
went, so the top of the piece is the higher part of the cliff. And also if there is a safety concern. For
example some pieces might have metal rods or broken glass etc and we try to position these ‘dangers’
out of reach of kids or out of range for poking people in the eye.
Sp: You’ve mentioned the influence of Kurt Schwitters on you as an artist and the need to get physical and
make something. This seems quite important to you as a family. You don’t have assistants and you
don’t outsource any material. Everything, from traveling to and surveying the site, to making the casts
and painting is done by Boyle Family. How important is it for you to follow through and be involved in
the process from conception to completion?
SB: We think one of the main things about making art is the physical process of making the piece and
how one of the secrets is that the process of making a piece can often put you in the right mental
framework to then come up with more ideas. So working on one piece can help generate subsequent
pieces. If it is right for some artists to have assistants or outsource their production, then good for
them, we are not critical in any way. It is just that for us, most of the other stuff involved in making
and exhibiting work is a hassle that keeps us away from making pieces. It is all that stuff we want to
delegate, so we can spend as much time working on pieces as we can.
Sp: Boyle Family’s production techniques have significantly changed since the earliest Earth Studies
in the 60’s, always trying to better your skills at recreating the reality of the sites as accurately as
possible. In the early works you were literally transferring objects and debris from the site onto board
whereas now you work mainly in fiberglass and resin. Do you still include real evidence from the
sites? It seems interesting that in order to show reality as objectively as possible you have made the
decision to include less and less of the real material. Was this mainly a question of practicality, in
terms of the time constraints on the actual sites and the comparatively lighter weight of a work made
in fiberglass and resin, or was there also a development in the conceptual/ideological approach to
your practice?
SB: There were all sorts of issues in the development of the work. Early on the move from all real material
transferred onto boards, to real material with resin and fibreglass was firstly to extend the range of
possible sites to include ones where it would be very difficult to transfer any material by hand. It
was one thing to go to a demolition site and pick up discarded bricks and other loose material, but
quite another to go to a street where the paving stones or kerb stones would be too heavy and clearly
belonged to the local council or government. There was also the issue that a lot of the finer and more
delicate material it was impossible to pick up, for example how do you pick up an area of cracked
mud or mud that is drying out after a shower and a dog has walked through it or the grains of sand
on a beach in exactly the way they were on the beach? So the casting techniques extended the range
of possibilities, to try and be more accurate and present the evidence of each site more truthfully. For
example a piece might have evidence of insects or snails moving across the site in very fine detail.
We want to include that evidence because it is a crucial part of the story of the site. Almost all of the
pieces still retain some real material, although the exact amount varies from piece to piece. The ones
with hardly anything are the snow studies, as obviously the snow and ice have melted, although in
theory these pieces could still have traces of pollution on the surface. Most pieces have a range of
real material from the site, usually the loose material, from scrapes and markings to a patina of dirt
and dust, small stones, cigarette ends, ring pulls etc. As we are all working on them at the same time,
often under the pressure of resins setting, we are never exactly sure what is mostly painted resin and
what we have left in as real. We think it is quite good that we don’t have an exact record of what we
have done on each piece. It gives the work a tension and it shows that we are all equal working on the
pieces. Each of us has the same right to work on any area of the piece as anyone else. We don’t divide
them up into areas for each of us to work on.
The idea of trying to see things as they are, for themselves, as accurately as possible is so important
and brings with it so many challenges, that the issue of development in a conceptual sense doesn’t
seem that significant to us. The big conceptual question is whether it is ever possible to see, or
experience, something objectively at all. Many people would suggest that it isn’t even worth making
the attempt. They might argue that truth is a old fashioned, rather quaint concept and that there are
myriad competing ideas of truth in any given situation. And we can go along with that idea, for us it
is more an issue of gathering evidence and making the attempt to see things objectively. It is as if we
have to forget we are artists, forget these might be shown in a gallery or museum, certainly not try
to please a curator, gallerist or critic, or ourselves. We are gathering evidence and we think that is
important for its own sake. We would suggest that even if you think the whole concept of evidence and
truth is deeply flawed, you probably still think it is a problem worth grappling with and the attempt to
gather evidence is still worth it.
Imagine the outrage if governments announced that because the concept of truth might be flawed they
are no longer going to fund research into climate change science. People would be going nuts saying
they had caved in to the fossil fuel lobby.
Sp: You have mentioned in a previous conversation we’ve had that the overall project of Boyle Family is
‘Contemporary Archeology’. Could you explain further how you see the relationship between your
practice and a scientific/archeological approach to the contemporary environment?
SB: The concept of contemporary archaeology is one of the keys to our work. Mark and Joan launched
their Institute of Contemporary Archaeology in February 1966 with a dig at the site of a burnt down
factory in Shepherd’s Bush. They invited a number of friends to come for the dig and participants
included Gustav Metzger, John Latham and Jasia Reichardt amongst others. The main idea was to try
to look at the contemporary world as if one was an archaeologist looking for evidence of past societies
or indeed a scientist of any kind trying to gather evidence. But we don’t see ourselves as scientists or
even pseudo scientists. One of the key distinctions is that our whole project is based on the idea of
trying not to have an agenda, of not trying to find evidence for or against a theory, but of just trying
to see for the sake of seeing. So an archaeologist or scientist might go to a particular location because
it is relevant to their study, there is particular evidence to find and evaluate. We go to random sites
just to see what is there and to record it as accurately as we can. We haven’t got an agenda. We are not
there to say this is evidence of x, y or z and this is bad or good. We are just saying we went to these
sites and we found and recorded this evidence.
Sp: One of the paradoxes that we come across when looking at one of the Earth Studies is that we are
presented with a square of randomly selected ground that presents to us reality as it really was. But
of course as soon as you’ve started recording the sites, you have inevitably changed them as well.
Not only through your artistic gesture but also on a practical level. You have mentioned for example
that in order to work undisturbed and not get into trouble that Mark had business cards printed
stating that he was the Director of the Institute of Contemporary Archeology and you all wore high
viz jackets to look official. And as a result of your technique, the square patch of ground was also left
‘cleaner’ than how you found it I assume, as you would lift up the surface material, dirt and gravel
in the process. There was then almost a performance or intervention at the site. How do you see this
relationship?
SB: We are very aware that we are having an effect on the sites, even a very minimal one in the case of
urban sites in London, for example with a concrete pavement and tarmac, such as at the site for..... In
general our intervention is much less than a small archaeological dig would be at the site. Our sites
are much smaller than most digs and we don’t dig down, but take a record of the surface. This is partly
because the contemporary world is the surface of the earth. It is the trace of the car or dog that passed
by in the last few minutes or the effect of the wind drying out ground as we are there working. To dig
down at all is to go back in time for evidence of the past, not the present. If the wings of a butterfly
on the other side of the world are having an effect, then we certainly are, just by getting to the site
and standing there. Obviously we try to disturb the site as little as possible and we try to record it as
undisturbed as we can.
But we are aware we are having an effect and for this reason with our World Series projects we include
a study of ourselves in the work. Recording ourselves as active agents in the exercise. So for example
with our recent World Series project in Lazio, between Rome and Naples, we took skin samples and
blood and cheek cell samples from each of us. They are not exhaustive, but they are an attempt at
showing that we are aware of this exact issue.
All conversations unless otherwise mentioned have taken place between the artist and the writer between
December 2013 and January 2014.
SELECTED IMAGES
Assemblage,1963
Norland Road Study (Blue Bag), 1964
Shepherds Bush Study, 1966
Boyle Family with electron micro-photographs of hairs, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 1978
InstallationofWorldSeriesmapandNyordStudy,Denmark,fromtheWorldSeries,PaulMaenzGallery,Cologne,1971
CONDITION REpORT