Boyle Family Art

February 17, 2009 8:23 PM

"The Boyle Family are a family of collaborative artists based in London. Their best known work, however, continues to be their Journey to the Surface of the Earth. Begun in 1964, this work encompasses many different series. Each of these series has involved various random selection techniques to isolate a rectangle of the Earth's surface. In the case of the World Series 1000 random selections were made from a giant map of the world by blindfolded visitors. Once the random selection has been made, they recreate the site in a fixed and permanent form as a painted fibreglass relief. They recognise that each work is, in a sense, a failure. They know the selections can never be truly random and that it is impossible to eliminate themselves and their own subjective influences."
posted by dhruva (3 comments total)

where is a link to this work?

How did they do the ones on the Ocean? Did they actually travel to all these spots exactly?
posted by mary8nne at 4:03 AM on February 18, 2009

It's the main link. The website is a bit all over the place, though.

Re: water, here's what they did: " Liquids (10)

1. Make a surface study with film or by casting the surface.

2. Make a hologram of the water.

3. Take water samples at various depths.

4. Make an underwater film of coloured dyes in the water to show turbulence.

5. Perhaps take the surface coating of the sea bed as in solids 1."
posted by dhruva at 8:55 AM on February 18, 2009

This is very interesting, and I'm bookmarking it for later since there's a lot of dense information and a variety of intriguing projects (at least at first glance) presented on the website. I'm almost through Miwon Kwon's "One Place After Another" and I've recently started in on Grant Kester's "Conversation Pieces". The Boyle family's work seems to share many of the same methods and concerns with site-responsive and/or dialogical art that other works chronicled in these two books do. Thanks for the link!
posted by stagewhisper at 9:06 AM on February 18, 2009