Travis and I started collaborating in 2005 after a few conversations about making something together that would flirt with the language of installation while creating new threads of our individual languages. From our website at www.smithtownsendcollaborative.blogspot.com:
"The Smith Townsend Collaborative was formed by artists Brandon C. Smith and Travis Townsend as a way to explore a visual dialogue outside and in addition to their own artistic pursuits. "Our languages have overlapped. In this new space where a situation is created, we allow for the ambiguity that is grown from complexity. There is a moment when once disparate ideas become literally attached through the ropes of metaphor and material.” The Triumph is an ongoing project involving several installations and individual pieces. “We see the Triumph as a declaration of big ideas embodied within diverse visual metaphors. It tries to be epic, pathetic and hopeful.”
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| The first manifestation of the Triumph |
The conversations that we have had since this original collaborations have changed quite substantially. We no longer refer to all of our works as "The Triumph." The ideas that we were working with in this original installation still persist. The Triumph as shown in the image above was exhibited at the LAL in Lexington KY and had two sequels. We talked about them in terms of movies that become trilogies and the rise and fall of climatic arcs and so on. In this first version we were interested in things we tow throughout our lives - and the things we leave behind. Five bone white cows drag an impossibly large object that is either a defunct war machine, dead technology, home, an arc of memory or possibly the sum of all of their knowledge. The cows seem to be moving toward an unknown destination locked in an impossible task. While in other parts of the room a group of seven cows seem to be abandoning a structure. They have given up on whatever this is. Travis and I think this piece suggests a whole range of questions: What are these things that we drag throughout our lives? How do we choose what we abandon? Is this event heroic or simply and pathetically comedic?
Travis and I collaborate well together. We have an ongoing dialogue about these things that advances year by year and evolves. Collaboration is to always have one person who thinks the ideas you are presenting are valid. It provides a sense of legitimacy that one artist, who is a thoughtful and interesting artist, agrees that these ideas are worth putting out there. Its having backup.
This blog post is a response to a Blogwatchers post that I missed. So in answering the Blogwatcher question, I also decided to extend this into additional posts about my collaborations with Travis. My intention is to discuss our other exhibitions a bit and to talk about the nature of collaboration more. We have a show coming up this month at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art and I will be documenting that show here as well.