Of Museum & Gallery Benches (CSU East Bay)

Artist's book featuring an essay on the gallery / museum bench as a functional viewing and sitting device, and a ready-made work of art. The essay muses on the ambivalence of a familiar object whose role, meaning and status are reassigned. It follows the bench's journey from institutional apparel, to a symbol of the act of contemplating - embodying the notion of "being with art" dear to Gilbert and George in "To Be With Art Is All We Ask" (1970). Christophe Cherix asks (in Hans-Ulrich Obrist's "A Brief History Of Curating", JRP/Ringier, 2009): "How can one be fully with art? Can art be experienced directly in a society that has produced so much discourse and built so many structures to guide the spectator?".

Daly exhibited both the gallery bench and the artist's book at the "Emerging Artists" exhibition at CSU East Bay, in 2014. The work is titled "To Be With Art (Is All I Ask)".

To preserve the original form of the artist's book, digital versions are not available.