ALAN MAGEE
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ALAN MAGEE
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Permission to Commence

Permission to commence, Wall drawing; 25cm x15cm – Pencil on plaster; Crack Monitor and Report sheets, 2013

For the show ‘Even Clouds’ selected artists were invited to respond to a quote by French painter Édouard Maneton the relationship between the subject of painting and the act of painting. Taking the wall-drawing as a child’s first self-generated art act, Permission to Commence looks at ideas of labor and the ownership of work, in three parts. Part 1 involved the artist seeking permission from management at the university where he works, to create a small crack in a wall somewhere in the building. Part 2 had the artist replicate the crack directly onto the wall of the gallery. Later applying an engineer’s Crack Monitor in preparation for part 3. Part 3 had the gallerists (Keran James & Michael Keenan) supervise the piece using the crack-monitor and its corresponding report sheets, to make a daily log of the drawing for the duration of the exhibition.

Exhibited at Studio 1.1, London
Photography courtesy of the artist


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