Defining Terms: The Piracy Project

Recently, I attended an event at Grand Union, responding to their then exhibition by AND Publishing: The Piracy Project. Hosted by AND Publishing artists Eva Weinmayr and Andrea Francke, and accompanied by Karen Di Franco (archivist and curator at the CHELSEA Space) the purpose of this workshop/event was to extract the modes of distribution, appropriation and relation to the source from a number of chosen books from the piracy project and in doing so generate a means for categorization for the whole collection.

Libraries along with museums and galleries have the power to present the history and heritage of their communities. Categorization is how we navigate libraries, but these categories become institutionalised, framing our perceptions of knowledge and how culture is organised. How can we begin to create a method for categorization when it is already embedded within culture?

The books in the Piracy Project are very complex, so we began with three sub-headings: 1. METHOD OF APPROPRIATION 2. RELATION TO THE SOURCE 3. METHOD OF DISTRIBUTION the group then came up with many phrases and terms to define individual books.

There was the realization that we had generated too many terms to create a method of categorization, so the next stage was to narrow these down further or get rid of superfluous language. We were unable to narrow these down completely within the time frame but what AND Publishing has begun is a method of gaining greater understanding of pirated and artist books and are therefore able to give them greater identity.

My review of the exhibition and more information can be found on Droste Effect Magazine

Posterized

Laura Onions (2013) Monument to a Former Self

Poster series displaying 2013 graduate work - greeting students as they walk to the Fine Art department at the University of Wolverhampton. 

(L to R) Seth Hobday, Kathleen Fabre, Pricilla McInnes

(L to R)  Abbie Louise Birtles, Paige Finley, Charles Archibong

We don't only show art - we make it too!

The complexity of working contemporary culture today is based on communication. Conversation is now seen as a productive method for producing new ideas, expanding relations and creating diversity. This type of collaboration is at the heart of The Showroom's latest exhibition by Ciara Phillips. The screen print artist has transformed the gallery into a living and breathing workshop in which guests, artists, women's groups and local people are invited to make prints with Phillips, surrounded by her large scale works on newspaper and cotton.   

Ciara Phillips,2013, Dyed screen print on cotton (monoprint)

 
Repetitive black and white graphic posters line the walls of the gallery, incorporating the text 'New Things to Discuss' in a billboard-esque style backdrop reflecting the fundamental collective objectives of the exhibition. Layered over this wallpaper ground are multiple screen prints in cotton. The combination of graphic print, irregular marks and painterly colour is complex, but true to Phillips style, providing an example of what could be aesthetically achieved within the workshops.    

Although, it's not always about the finished article, the process and the act of making is clear and is just as - if not more important than the results, highlighting that the making does not have to stop just because it has entered the gallery. Viewers can appreciate the trace of the artist and those whom Phillips has worked with, there is still an active atmosphere in the air, gaining a sense that The Showroom is not only displaying art but making it too.

The scope and potential for the collaborative nature of Phillips' practice reaches over and above the fields of art. The act of print making is used as a vehicle for people from different backgrounds, with different areas of knowledge to come together whilst experimenting with the practice of screen printing. Activism, alternative advertising and community activity are what Phillips predicts will be the final conclusions of this exhibition - extending the project out beyond the confines of the gallery. 

Trace of the Process

Photos by LJ Onions

Maintenance Art Works at the Arnolfini - Who is it really for?




Touch Sanitation

 



  "I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother, (random order) I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separatly) I 'do' Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art."

These are the opening words to Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance Art Works exhibition at the Arnolfini, Bristol.

In 1969 Ukeles fell out of the art world when she became a mother. In order to combat the oppositions between art and life she wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art. It was her re-positioning into art, highlighting the everyday and questioning what is defined as 'work' or a 'role', culminating in a body of performances works.

The exhibition contains documents and photographs that archive the Maintenence performances in a layout that can be described as 'dry', or as though the original intention was for these works to be presented within a book. The experience would be exactly the same, except you could be sitting down instead.     

Presenting an archive in the context of an exhibition needs more effort in preventing a stagnant environment. Two video's of Ukeles most well known performance, Touch Sanitation are presented in an individual manner. Television, headphones, chair, viewer, and in this the impact of the piece as public art is lost. Yes these are videos of a moment in time, a 'one time performance' but this is what remains, therefore the viewing of these videos could have been presented in a more centralised, shared atmosphere.

The aim of touch sanitation was to break down social boundaries and to empower people in the act of change, appreciating those who worked for New York city, doing the jobs people prefer to ignore and leave to others. Although it seems the resulting empowerment lies within Ukeles and her career. What did shaking hands with this woman mean to the workers of the Department of Sanitation? When looking back upon the project she writes:

          "I meet a sanitation worker. I see deep in his eyes what I have come to call the Gates of Acceptance. I see him looking at me, and then I see his gates opening up....We are exploding the old upstairs-downstairs cultural frame together." (Feb 2007) 

She saw meeting new people as a scary, dangerous prospect, as though these people are a different species, staring at her, but then everything turns out okay. She is fine and well treated. Sanitiation workers are people too, who would have thought. It seems that Ukeles entered the project with stereotypical views, placing herself as the 'upstairs' to their 'downstairs' it begs the question who was this really for?