Jill Townsley Deinstallation

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a bit about Jill
0:00:01
Jill Townsley is a contemporary British artist whose work often makes use of the repetitive, even obsessive use of individual elements. As such, she had good company as one of the artists in MAD's exhibition Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, which explored the reuse of every-day items as artmaking materials. (photo: Katie Sokoler)

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Jill's helpers
0:00:13
Jill did have a bit of help in putting this piece together - four volunteers worked all week to put together the thousands of plastic spoon and rubber band tripods that are the individual elements of the huge pyramid. You can see them on the right side of the screen, constructing away.

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something the video does not mention
0:00:51
'Spoons' was actually supposed to collapse throughout the run of Second Lives. It was Jill's intention that at the end of the exhibition, all that we'd have left would be a pile of spoons with broken rubber bands flung around the gallery. Unfortunately, our new museum building proved too well climate-controlled, our galleries too resistant to the harmful affects of humidity and sunlight. Despite the installation of an infrared lamp and even a bit of manual prompting by our curators (with Jill's permission), the piece was still largely standing when we closed the show.

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time-lapse details
0:01:17
This time-lapse was shot at one frame per 5 seconds, so the piece really did come down over the course of about 20 seconds. Probably not surprising considering the assistants. (photo: Katie Sokoler)

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conservation matters
0:01:49
The fun of knocking down a giant spoon pyramid aside, this de-installation was closely supervised by MAD's curators and registrars. After all, this was a piece of art and worthy of being treated as such, even if it was created from inexpensive and readily-available materials. And, of course, Jill was wholly on board with this somewhat unorthodox approach. (photo: Katie Sokoler)

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Channels: Contemporary ArtExhibitionsJill Townsley

Jill Townsley's massive Spoons was exhibited in Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design's new home at 2 Columbus Circle. As shown in this video, Jill and a small army of helpers constructed the piece on-site over the period of a week with the intention that, once put together, the piece would slowly fall apart. Over the few months the exhibition was open to the public at MAD, the piece did begin it's inevitable decay, but it didn't quite destroy itself. So, after the exhibition closed, we brought in some special assistants to help Spoons reach its 'ultimate configuration.'

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