New Zealand artists Alicia Frankovich was an initial artist I looked at before making our art machines. She is recognised for exploring “the equivalency between physical forms and the potential for new modes of imagining both human and non-human form and behaviour,” as described on the Starkwhite Gallery Website. This related to our performance staircase piece. When looking at the art work, your brain is left to imagine the physical process of someone taking those steps up and down a staircase, without actually physically seeing it.
In her A Plane For Behavers pieces, she explores ideas around our bodies position in space and how we interact within that space. She performed her works at Art Space in Auckland. Director Emma Bugden describes Frankovich’s work as, “Alicia is interested in both the potential and limits of the body, its capacity for failure. The precariousness of how we interact with space is highlighted in her performances. Her work also asks to question how we behave, what rules govern our movements in a room or the street.” Once again this carries over to our staircase piece where we observe our bodies as they interact with the staircase.
I found it interesting how she uses her body as a part of the artwork which relates to the idea of art machines. In her pieces the harness and rope becomes the ‘machine’ as it suspends her in the air. Similarly, the stairs becomes the machine in our piece only once we interacted with them.
ArtSpace, “Alicia Frankovich, A plane for behavers,” Scoop, Friday, 24 April 2009 https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0904/S00331/alicia-frankovich-a-plane-for-behavers.htm
https://www.starkwhite.co.nz/alicia-frankovich-bio, Accessed 22 July, 2021.
https://www.mindfood.com/au/gallery/alicia-frankovich-performance-works-gallery/, Accessed 22 July, 2021.