It was only in the last couple of weeks leading up to A Space for the Bittern that I found myself travelling back to my school math classes, exploring the workings of venn diagrams once again. I always loved these diagrams, because of the way that they work on two levels simultaneously: first, visually, you get an instant instinctive grasp of the relationships between the components without having to understand them; second, intellectually, as you start trying to work out, one by one, what each of the different overlaps actually means. I came back Venn‘s creations as they offered a way of trying to visualise the relationships between the objects (and here I am including the videos and sound as objects) in the exhibition. A Space of the Bittern can be seen as a ‘theatre of objects’ with the venn diagram (which was on the exhibition guide, a detail of which is shown here) mapping out the stage. As for the play, that takes place in the visitor’s mind, each one slightly different. A posthumous thanks to John Venn.
