Temporary Site Works

Temporary site-works, a form of praxis, where Ayers can figure out the ‘uncertainty and complexity’ from the permeable institution and what is re-negotiated.

‘Container’ was commissioned for Architecture Week, 2005. Located in a local-global flow, conversations ensued of refurbished art schools competition for education’s higher ground.

Installed by the site crane it was originally a temporary installation, then remained throughout the refurbishment as a witness of activity and exit strategy. Its change from hidden element in a busy building site, itself a work in progress to exposed object was an important transition and the artist saw this longer time frame as a potential for future projects. The work equally converses with works of Frank Ghery, Robert Smithson, Dan Graham and Gordon Matta-Clark.

A DVD – ‘Container – A Visual Narrative’ was produced

‘Flagging’ For Hinterland, River Trent, is a message in signal flags for the boat launch on October 1, 2006. Passengers received a card enabling them to decipher the flags. This work cites different obsessions with flags, their meaning, and their traditions of identity, power and communication.

“If the Earl of Nottingham had got his way, the Union Flag wouldn’t look like it does now and Nelson frustrated some of his admirals by sending so many signal messages in battle. An email can have a flag attachment and websites represent language via flag hyperlinks.

As an idea or a phenomenon flags perpetuate our symbiotic connection with the wind. D. H. Lawrence describes a wind that blows through us in his poem ‘Song of a man who has come through’. The wind is the true domain of the flag even though after ‘a small step for mankind’ a flag was soon planted in a land devoid of wind.

• http://www.ntu.ac.uk/ntsad/