Hands Up
1994 / 2019

10 digital exhibition prints, mounted on Aludibond, various sizes, bored hole, 1 laptop with 10 stored graphics, b&w printer, folder for use.

The installation, Hands Up, is only complete with the active participation of viewers. A computer offers a choice of graphic works for printing. These can then be taken away in the folder provided. The individual prints show subjects from art and cultural history that are concerned with the activities of the hand: studies of the hand by Albrecht Dürer; a children’s rhyme that ends in a horrible joke; a patterned arrangement of phallic noodles; the aerobatic flight patterns of a manually controlled aeroplane; the scientific descriptors of the physical characteristics of the hand; human bones artfully stacked and made into ornamental arrangements; considerations of left- and right handedness; Venetian needlepoint lace; prehistoric cave drawings and a Bruce Nauman drawing of interlocking hands. The ‘mixed bag’ juxtaposes scientific seriousness with humour and forms a link with the ten object-like photographs of glove stretchers in the installation. A nail juts out of each picture, apparently a hanger for both the photo work and the wire object it depicts. This brings the third dimension into play. The category boundaries of graphics, photographs and objects blur. In the context of the offer to print the graphic works, terms such as production, reproduction and image memory begin to shimmer.

Margareta Sandhofer, curator
Discrete Austrian Secrets: Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China