Tara Bogart: Immoderation, success, and material

    Reading Relational Aesthetics has increasingly made me wonder what art would not be considered relational, when it really came down to it -- it seems like most work that appears in a gallery forms the kind of immediate micro-community that Bourriaud calls relational when one interacts with it. Tara Bogart's work in particular made me consider the relational nature of work shown in a gallery -- in the photos above, for instance, there is a clear relationship between the three women whose rooms are represented, and there is a clear space for the viewer to inhabit. In terms of the viewer's role, these works remind me of YB Artist Tracey Emin, and how many of her works simultaneously invite the viewer into a private space and tell the viewer to leave, because of the private, uncomfortable nature of the work in the gallery setting. 

    The fact that these are photographs raises other questions, however: would these works be more or less relational if the objects represented actually appeared in the gallery?  Can a photograph ever be relational? Am I simply applying the label relational because I recently read about it, or is there really something relational about these three images?