In the spirit of stretching out April Fools as long as it can and will go, I thought I’d put together a quiz called ‘But… Is It Art?’

For people who haven’t sat through a course of Post-Modernism 101, much of contemporary art can seem a big question mark. I wish we could show people walking through a gallery, with thought bubbles above their heads playing what they’re thinking. Art (instead of Night) Vision goggles. Patents pending.

Installation practice can be particularly puzzling. I’m speaking especially about exhibitions of ready-made objects arranged artfully in white spaces, or featuring materials sourced from everyday – also known to the layman as ‘trash’. Sometimes, the looking experience becomes a game of ‘Where’s Waldo?’, i.e. ‘spot-the-art’. I remember thinking this during Lost Gen’s ‘Bangun/Abandon’ project in an abandoned bungalow last year. Wandering the derelict compound, I had a great time trying to figure out if that pile of scrap in a corner was on purpose or not.

Where’s Waldo: The Great Picture Hunt, Candlewick Press, May 2006

Contemporary installation and sculpture practice is difficult to access without at least some knowledge of Marcel Duchamp and what constitutes a ‘ready-made‘ object. Audiences are better equipped to look at images, such as paintings and photography, because we instinctively know how images work. Objects however, occupy space. Everyday objects (or ‘ready-mades’, a term coined by big daddy of post-modernism Marcel Duchamp) placed in a gallery or exhibition setting causes us to reflect on that very setting, or the space that surrounds the object. You start to think about the walls of the gallery, where the gallery is situated, and its relationship to this ball of paper on the floor (or whatever conceptual thing that’s being shown). Therefore installation is a form of sculpture, but one that uses space as one of its materials.

Ok, I’ll leave the Post-Modernism 101 for another day (We’re also looking for someone who can do a series of Modernism 101 posts for us – interested, please put up your hand). Now, let’s get on with that quiz! This is how it works: I’ve compiled a series of images below. Some of them are artworks, some are not. Basically you need to look at them and ask yourself ‘But… Is It Art?’.

Answers and image sources next week. Have fun.

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1. Bed of some kind:

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2. Dishes of some kind in some kind of sink:

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3. Rocky formations of some kind:

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4. Some kind of rock formation:

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5. Some persons leaning against a fence of some kind, somewhere:

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6. Some persons crowding around on a street corner of some kind:

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7. Some kind of trash formation:

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8. A TV or something on the wall with other kinds of things around it and on the floor: