Neither here nor there — Ellie Lee-Duncan

Neither here nor there: threshold as a concept

originally published in:

Writings from the 2017 Adam Art Gallery Summer Intensive

Victoria University Press, Print
2017

The foyer is a necessity, a fissure; the extension of a threshold. It is a site with transformational power.

The foyer is a point of disruption between the world and the gallery. By separating these two spaces, it heightens this divide. It is the portal orchestrating difference.

The foyer is an intermediary zone where visitors are prepared for what lies beyond.

‘The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is “art.” The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself. This gives the space a presence possessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved through the repetition of a closed system of values. Some of the sanctity of the church, the formality of the courtroom . . . So powerful are the perceptual fields of force within this chamber that, once outside it, art can lapse into secular status.’ (1)

Let us consider Brian O’Doherty’s proposition that the ‘white cube’ is designed to approximate a religious site of worship..(1) According to him, the modern gallery is a non-space, where fixed spatial and temporal coordinates are dislocated to achieve a sense of a higher metaphysical realm. This is achieved by reducing signs of daily life, to instead create the conditions where art works can be viewed on a purely mental plane.

Prior to entering a synagogue or mosque one encounters a foyer or vestibule; in a cathedral it is called the narthex. Here one prepares for a meaningful interaction, set apart from the mundanity of daily life. Often, this is marked by rituals such as ablutions, the removal of shoes, or the donning of specific headwear.

The foyer is a place of cleansing, where the world is left behind, we leave our coats, wipe our feet, prepare to enter.

On our journey along Karangahape Road, I had the opportunity to encounter different thresholds; to experience the transition from street to gallery mediated by the specific qualities and character of the different venues. I was struck by the fact that each space shared certain commonalities yet each had specific differencesbut each sounded different notes. Like the margin before a musical score, which lays out the key and time signature, falling within, yet precursor to the inked architecture of the following bars, each threshold played a vital role, informing the visitor about what they could expect beyond.

Stairs were a common feature. Up or down, the transition from street level was effected by a change in elevation. We went into a hall and up some stairs to arrive at Anna Miles’s gallery. This was distinguished by warm-red Turkish runners and elegant, antique furniture. This elegant threshold entered via a row of non-descript apartments was a disconcerting point of arrival. Yet under the stairs bubble-wrapped canvases were stacked, a sign of what to lay beyond: a gallery literally inserted into a living room, signalled by clean walls, bare concrete and discrete spotlighting.

We went up too, at Hopkinson Mossman, and at Michael Lett. Their entries lifted us off the street, prepared us for the clean, cool spread of their respective interiors. Both were so discrete. A simple painted door beside automobile repair shops; an ironwork grille in front of a porch off a modest side-street. Michael Lett’s doormat was sufficiently impressive and I felt sure my dusty soles inelegant feet needed to be thoroughly scrubbed before entering.

Unlike the other galleries, Glovebox was arrived at by the opposite trajectory; the stairs took me down to a low-ceilinged, almost subterranean space. Is there something to be said for the fact that this was an artist-run space, a back-door, out-of-sight venture, rather than an exclusive swish dealership? In the corridor, a small strip of carpet was marked with shoe prints tracking white paint, the residual trace of the artist and their do-it-themselves attitude.

These galleries were all in repurposed spaces, and the entrances were vestiges from the buildings’ previous identities. Each foyer was a liminal space. Outside, the oppressive buzz of street traffic and the constant circulation of bodies. Yet, a step inside and the gallery space enveloped me, silently sequestering me from the outside world, to prepare me for the art that lay within.

1. Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: the Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. p. 14.