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For this inaugural Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and Art & Australia Emerging Writers Program review, Toby Miller was mentored by author and University of Melbourne lecturer, Justin Clemens.

There was every reason to believe that Scene 1 , 2001-, by the Melbourne artists' collective DAMP - in so far as it was a scene - was an inviting one. Sharing the room with a large painted tableau in which members of DAMP had depicted themselves in poses adapted from Christian iconography, a gallery attendant politely invited members of the audience to pose in the scene while their photograph was taken. In play was a carnivalesque self-portrait with audience members encouraged to walk behind the painted panels and place their heads through any one of thirteen carefully placed holes, assuming a place in the composition originally occupied by one of the artists. The punch line was both a blurring of the traditionally static relationship between artist and audience and a reflexive comment on the ever-evolving membership of DAMP.

Reading Scene 1 as an invitation to become a participant 'in' rather than mere spectator 'of' the work ties it closely to DAMP's other projects which have - in varying ways and through various means - explored the grammar and apparatus through which artists and audiences face each other...

For some critics of DAMP such efforts to engage an audience directly are more than acts of political pretence. Works such as Scene 1 are often presented as engendering a community by parodying the traditional stratifications of the art world. Such readings, however, fail to see the extent to which the work's relationship with its audience is mediated by an equally strong incredulity towards that audience as a community capable of supporting and prolonging works of art co-dependantly. DAMP's singular strategy in this regard has been to secure its audience by making them constituent elements in the functioning of their practice.

A work of art as envisaged by DAMP will not fail simply for reasons stemming from a possible incoherence in the work, but rather because the audience itself is likewise internally incoherent. Along these lines, a successful DAMP collaboration will necessarily take the form of an acknowledgement of the potential failures of audiences and artists in their efforts to cohabit a single horizon. The dilemma this poses for DAMP is that they might go too far - they might alienate their audience rather than finding that they have anything meaningful to say or share with them...

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Spring 2008 issue.