Rules versus Chance

‘Rules versus Chance’ was generated during a Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University. Marce was awarded the Fellowship because of her previous work on how elements of control and chance affected the process of painting. Marce’s research in this area acknowledges sources ranging from Dada to painters within the systems art field such as Kenneth Martin, who had applied rules to give control in the artwork. Marce was investigating rules largely borrowed from popular games, employing something from real-life that already exists in people’s knowledge to create abstract painitings. This aligns aesthetic systems with social systems using the form of the game, which models social action as a sphere of autonomous action.

Rules such as following specific directions or using cold colours in one layer and warm ones in the ensuing layer, were set up before starting the painting and the control was achieved by following these rules to create the paintings. At the same time, elements of chance were introduced in order to disrupt control. Marce used various methods, including throwing a die, to disrupt this control and allow chance to intervene in the painting process. The directions of the die overruled the controls initially introduced, in situating colours and choosing shapes.

A series of ten paintings were created during this research period and these were shown initially at the Picker Gallery with the sculptor Richard Trupp. Other showings included ‘Raid Projects’ in Los Angeles alongside Jo Bruton, Katie Pratt and Danny Rolph; ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ including Markus Vater, Jaime Gili and Catrin Huber at Mile End Pavilions, London, ‘More Ways of Seeing’ with Sarah Staton and Sarah Beddington at Blains Fine Art Gallery, London; and ‘ArtAid 2002’ at the Bloomberg Space, London.