Blithe Riley

Although I found Ms. Riley's work to be more clearly defined as performance or gallery art than Siobhan Rigg's, I'd have to say that my lack of comprehension of modern art continues to be a problem. Mostly I'm referring to her gallery piece, "Shaker, Crawler, Wall." Of the three pieces, the only one that I thought I understood was the Wall, which involved an element of creating a stimulating experience for the visitors. It also made an interesting observation about how eye-hand coordination can be tricked, which confuses a person's senses in an interesting way. The other two pieces, especially the Shaker, were a bit bizarre, and I really couldn't come up with an interpretation for what was going on.

The piece that was built onto an old water tower framework was the most interesting to me in terms of showing a creative use for video as an artistic medium.

I also liked that she was involved in the database project, collecting interviews with artists and making them available to the public. Although I don't have much personal use for that sort of thing, I'm sure archiving those sorts of interviews will have a lot of historical significance in the future.

Probably the most interesting thing that Ms. Riley shared was the Belief Objects project. This is another work that has the potential to carry some philosophical and psychological significance. I'm not entirely sure what how the project is supposed to culminate and present itself, but that may have been due to the unfortunate technological problems during the presentation which prevented us from viewing some of the interviews that had been conducted so far.

Like I said, even if I didn't understand all of the pieces that Ms. Riley presented, I can at least tell that she is not only an active artist, but someone who is active in the art world, providing valuable services like the video archive project.