Naomi Kendrick : Exhibition Diary

As visitors entered The Lounge having just experienced my installation in The Middle Room, they will have found a note to them on the coffee table titled 'A Response...'

The coffee table note was an option, if the visitor wanted to respond, to participate, then it gave a few suggestions as to how for example, using the basic drawing and making materials I had left in the room, writing or discussion. It was also made clear that they could find their own way of responding, it was completly open. Most people participated by doing a combination of things, some just talked to me.

Some responses could be traced to within the installation itself, when the journey of someone's exploration of the work was left for me to find. This was rare and exciting as allthough I had not instructed people to leave the work in any particular state, the majority of people tried very hard to put everything back just as they found it, covering their tracks. Leaving people alone with the work changed things in the sense that more playing and exploration happened when people were within the installation, rather than it all taking place afterwards. Some of this I knew about, and some will remain a secret with the visitor.

One of my favourite response's was Andrew Brook's series of photographs from inside the installation. This was interesting because Andrew has photographed the majority of my work over the past three years, and this installation on two previous occasions, but he wanted to try and experience the work in the same way as the visitors coming to the exhibition were, including creating a response. These are some of the photographs he took as his respose to ( rather than documentation of ) the installation, I think they differ from his other photographs of the same space, the same gathering of objects and light - here he is not trying to capture just the physical, instead it is his experience of it, there is an atmosphere of play and perhaps even something sinister - a story.