John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

things could have felt quite differently if they were put together in different
ways. It felt contemporary it felt that there was actually some blood running
through the work. You could quite easily go somewhere like the Tate and just
feel that everything is dead. Actually it felt really alive.
20. What did you least like about the total exhibition?
Some of the restrictions in terms of movement I would have liked to have
opened that up slightly - you had to work with the architecture of the building
which meant that the last three rooms had the capacity to get a bit lost. If we
weren’t there our volunteers or folly staff had to encourage people to move
through. We used that to create different types of spaces going through the
show but having that kind of zig-zag feel to it automatically made the show slow
but by putting the ‘Morse’ code piece right in the centre it felt that you were
gathered around that. The architecture of the building was difficult to work
with and it showed.
21. What feedback from the local community did folly receive about
PBB?
We do have a good audience base and we were very consciously talking to all our
visitors during the run and it was nice to find that people actually understand
folly better because of this particular show. Some people had been wondering
where we were, lots of people went to the show who went to our original site
which was Castle Park thinking we would be there. So from our perspective it
helped people to understand where folly is right now and where folly is going to
go to next. Maybe it helped people to understand media arts practice which is a
very, very difficult field to explain to anybody. It gave us a platform, we haven’t
disappeared. They were also saying it was also great for Lancaster to have such a
high quality exhibition which traditionally would have gone to Manchester,
Glasgow or London. I had to explain to people that there are very few venues in
this country that could take a show like that because it doesn’t fit in the within
the traditional categories. Places like the ICA or the V&A in London for example
some art galleries, like the Tate would shy away from a show like that so the fact
that we were able to show it in Lancaster it was a show of quality and it was
appreciated. People don’t expect to see a show of that quality here which is
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