The Gallery vs The workshop: A Productive Tension

Galleries have rules that most of us are taught early on and know almost instinctively: don’t touch, don’t run, don’t get too close. It’s more often than not quiet, like a church. A time for pensive meditation. Spaces like these are designed to preserve, to protect, and to maintain an atmosphere of quiet respect.

Assembled materials from audience members (ft a 10c coin)

What would the gallery become if it were to hold an installation that is intended for noise, movement and material disruption? If the gallery was a workshop where the audience could co-create work, play and explore? A space where drawings became hopscotch grids, tic-tac-toe boards were built up out of rust flakes and pebbles?  

Breaking the script

Initially, from previous experience, I knew that audience members liked writing messages to the theoretical next reader or drawing the first picture that came to mind. It makes sense because as people we seem to all have a need to make sure others know that ‘we were here’. 

A wax block that has been written/drawn on with sharp found objects

I wanted the audience to break away from the script (literally), finding alternative materials to draw and write with if they still felt so inclined. Built into the exhibitions were also the idea that the audience would potentially respond to, add to or destroy the symbols and texts made by those that interacted before them. This allows each audience member to really interact and change the space according to their intuition or vision that they seemed to extract from getting to know the materials. 

Some audience members justified their changes by asking me permission or to help them move a table or plinths. At first glance, some of the actions seemed almost obvious. Of course a drawing on the floor invites someone to step across it. Of course soft wax tempts a hand to press into it. Of course a glowing sound-to-light device feels like something to be figured out with group knowledge.  

But in the gallery context, these gestures are also surprising, because they go against the unspoken script of passive looking. They blur the line between “appropriate” behaviour and playful curiosity.

The clash of two logics

This is where a productive tension arises: the gallery’s logic of control and preservation collides with the audience’s instinct for play and experimentation. One side says “be careful” and “don’t touch” while the other says “let’s see what happens.”

I came to realise that this clash wasn’t a problem to be solved, but a dynamic to be embraced. When people treat the gallery more like a workshop, they can create meaning through their own symbols, creations and dare I say assemblages. 

The materials, all stemming from a creative process of observation, collecting and extracting, provides a context to the interactions that follow. It is not necessary for the audience to know the context to explore the items and how they could work together. Providing the context rather than the content allows the audience the  freedom to create meaning freely without direction. 

Audience members recreating their friend with brick and wax

The social energy of play

One of my favourite surprises was watching a group of visitors gather around a plinth and start making up stories together about the objects on it. No one told them to. They simply leaned in, shared observations, and told micro-narratives that transformed the installation into a stage for collective imagination.

This reminded me that play isn’t frivolous — it’s a way of knowing. It gives people permission to test boundaries, to invent, and to connect with each other through interaction. 

Holding the tension

So perhaps galleries don’t need to become workshops entirely. Instead, the tension between the two — order and play, control and surprise — can itself be generative. It’s in that push and pull where new forms of meaning emerge.

I would like to suggest that the challenge for us, as artists and curators, is not to eliminate the tension but to hold it, to allow both care for the artwork and freedom for the audience to interact. Because sometimes, the most memorable moments in art come from the unexpected collisions between preservation and play.