In 1964, Scottish artists Mark Boyle and Joan Hills
began a project they called Journey to the Surface of the Earth. Within that category, many series followed, such as London Series, Tidal Series, Thaw Series, Japan Series and overall, the World Series. From their Web site:
Each
of these series has involved various random selection techniques to
isolate a rectangle of the Earth’s surface. In the case of the World
Series, 1000 random selections were made from a giant map of the world
by blindfolded visitors to the exhibition at London’s ICA in 1969.
The random selection serves several purposes: nothing is excluded as a
potential subject; the particular is chosen as a representative of the
whole & it reduces their subjective role as artists & creators
to that of “presenters”. To present a slice of reality as objectively
& truthfully as possible. They call this “motiveless appraisal”.
Once the random selection has been made, they recreate the site in a
fixed and permanent form as a painted fibreglass relief.
Mark Boyle died in 2005, but Hills and their two children, Sebastian and Georgia, continue as Boyle Family.
I can’t find a review of Tavares Strachan‘s Portal from Where We Are Is Always Miles Away that mentioned the Boyles, even though Strachan is singing a nonrandom version of their song. From Roberta Smith’s review,
you’d think Strachan was the first to pick up a piece of the earth and
replicate it, pound for pound, in Strachan’s case, the place where he
got a parking ticket.
And here we go again, Karen Rosenberg on Strachan in the NYT
on Sunday, no tip of the hat to Boyle Family. Milan Kundera called
history a thin thread of remembering stretched over an ocean of
forgetting. It is the job of everyone who writes about art to
strengthen that thread.
Nothing against Strachan. I think he’s terrific.
Leave a Reply