KATHRYN RYAN Pieces of Practice - PROJECT SPACE PROJECT #4

Kathryn Ryan, Pieces of Practice (detail: 15/11/11 Twigs for Wood) 2011. Pieces of Practice was produced during a 2-week residency project and was composed of 35 miniature installations throughout the project space, their titling on archival cards located on the wall or floor nearby, and a documentary drawing of each in a separate collection. Kathryn Ryan is a young and emerging artist, and Pieces of Practice was part of Articulate's residency project, the project space project, in which 8 artists were invited to use Articulate's project space for one fortnight each during 2011-12. One of the aims of this project was to show what different artists think a project space is through the way they use it.  

When I think about the difference between the paper I wrote and a more conventional paper, I am reminded of the differences between a project space, and the more formal exhibition space. I recently had the pleasure of working at Articulate Project Space in Leichhardt . What I found during my two weeks there was that I could very easily transport the studio process to the project space. The space became implicit in the creation of practice. I remember bringing a small bag of materials with me—it was important that I be able to carry everything and transport it easily—and this encouraged the miniature nature of my work that was already present. There was a great sense of being able to pack up an object or two, and, not knowing what it was for, make something out of it. Each day I'd worry that I'd reached the limit of what I was able to produce out of a frugal selection of material, and at the end of each day I was surprised that something new had emerged. On one day I packed up some twigs that were lying outside my house. A few hours later I had made wooden beams grow small delicate branches again. I particularly like this aspect that manifested there—which was this sense of giving space its objects back, making spatial supports appear alive again (or  revealing their aliveness). This had always been present in the way I dealt with objects, but I gained greater clarity of this through working at Articulate. (Kathryn Ryan 2012)