An Ecology of Values: critically interpreting John Newling’s art

Abstract

In this article I articulate the cultural geographies of performing potential spaces of a gallery exhibition. I offer my participative, affective relations with the artwork, exploring the fluidity and openness of the spaces in which I found objects that were mutual, commingling and dissonant. In doing so, it is necessary to let the work speak, but not to leave it there. Nor is it to appraise, close-up the arrangement or individual elements of the show in an objective aesthetic. Rather it is to acknowledge circling atmospheres emerging in my cultural geography of practice. New spaces emerge in the practice, through my play with the spaces of the objects as set out, and through my own responses in an affective and productive relational engagement with them, singly and severally.