West Space | Exhibition: Appropriate Forms

Appropriate Forms was shown at West Space in 2016 by Tiarney Miekus and Mino Peric.

Each day sees an influx of aesthetic ideas, yet the process of proposing sees the infinity of ideas brought into the finite. While rejection is perhaps a pragmatism, to what extent are rejected proposals truly rejected?

Appropriate Forms is a series of recorded vocal narrations that relays various gallery and exhibitions proposals that have been rejected. Over the duration of the work the specific and conceptual elements of rejected works are outlined and presented within the West Space proposal format. By imagining the rejected works in their proposed state, Appropriate Forms investigates the politics of the exhibition proposal process, the cost of lost opportunity and the ontological status of a proposed work – at what point does a work come into existence?

For the contemporary artist a work already exists in its proposed format, its consequences and conclusions already put forth; the gallery allows the written to become the reality. Rather than having these rejected works exhibited in the gallery proper, Appropriate Forms exists in the illegitimate and liminal space of the gallery’s lobby, not only mirroring the uncertain position of a proposed artwork, but also exhibiting in the space between the inside and outside, the gallery and the non-gallery, the accepted and the rejected.