INTERFACE

REVIEW

Artworks That Ideas Can Buy

Wilkinson Gallery, London
29 May – 5 July

Reviewed by: Catherine Wilson »

It was interesting to visit an exhibition proclaiming to invite audience participation and be confronted with an impenetrable façade. After walking up and down Vyner Street in East London in search of the gallery, I was pointed in the direction of a building with no signage, no street number and no apparent entrance apart from a set of large black industrial double doors that were locked. Viewer participation was going to be a challenge.

Once inside, 'Artworks That Ideas Can Buy' or 'artworks for sale in exchange for visitors' ideas', an exhibition by Italian conceptual artist, Cesare Pietroiusti, was situated in the gallery's Project Space. It featured mainly wall-based artworks, such as drawings, paintings, photographs and single channel video works, many of the pieces with performative elements, by ten diverse international artists. Participating artists also included Maria Thereza Alves, Dara Birnbaum, Adam Chodzko, Jeremy Deller, Jimmie Durham, Lara Favaretto, Joan Jonas, Lia Perjovski and Dan Perjovski. In the centre of the space a table and chairs with a supply of pens, paper and envelopes had been placed to encourage visitors to submit proposals and suggestions related to any of the artworks on show. At the close of the exhibition, the artists will read visitors' ideas and, if they believe any submitted idea equates to the value of their artwork, the author of that idea will receive the artwork in a form of non-monetary exchange.

The focus on process, experience and participation within a group dynamic is a well known feature of work by Cesare Pietroiusti. A qualified psychiatric physician, Pietroiusti became involved in conceptual experimentation during the 1970s and in particular, an interest in paradoxical and seemingly insignificant ordinary situations in human lives. An emblematic work was Non-Functional Thoughts, a book he published in 1997 which contained a list of one hundred useless or absurd ideas proposed as art projects for anyone to produce. Through different performance scenarios, Pietroiusti questions the value systems, power dynamics and relationships of exchange that accompany actions, situations and transactions that pervade our lives.

This concern was also reflected in the artworks on display. Limits by Others, 2009, by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, comprised one line of typeset text in capitals on the gallery wall: WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE LIMIT FOR AN ACTION? Here Bruguera has created a space of communication between herself and the audience. Those viewers who decide to answer the question will activate an intervention and two-way dialogue with the artist, who will respond by selecting one visitor suggestion and performing it. The author of the idea (visitor) will then become the owner of the work by signing a contract with the artist, allowing the owner to re-perform the work another five times.

The meaning of ownership in the context of land acquisition, and how value is conferred via legal processes and documentation was addressed in Settlement Copy, 2009, by UK artist, Adam Chodzko, which was a pirated copy of the video, Settlement, 2003. The single channel video featured a close up camera shot of a small piece of land, 34x23cm, and adjacent to the video monitor in a tray was a slice of turf (soil and grass) excavated from Burgess Park in Southwark. The soundtrack consisted of a voice reading aloud and questioning the legal contract that defined the terms by which this designated land was bestowed as a gift to a stranger, revealing the rights, obligations and restrictions accompanying this transaction between public authority and private individual. For me, what was particularly interesting was that an act of piracy had produced the present manifestation of the work. This constituted a subversive, irreversible intervention and a contrapuntal change in the direction of authorial exchange.

In contrast, Dan Perjovski's pen on paper drawing, Untitled, 2009, relied more on impromptu wit to comment on the value of art in the market. The work consisted of a cartoonish and hastily drawn figure in the centre of the picture space with surrounding it the scribbled statement: 'This drawing worth 500 pounds'. It was a humorous and self-mocking, albeit banal comment on the relationship between art and money.

Ultimately, the aim of this exhibition was to raise questions about the ways in which value is assigned to art in society by changing the terms of communication and exchange between artist and viewer, artwork and owner that rendered the market system irrelevant. Contention about the relationship between art and money is not just a product of our age of hyper-inflated prices at art auctions. It has been an issue in artistic circles in the west since the decline of royal, aristocratic and religious patronage in Europe, and became a mainstream concern with the politically and socially engaged art practices of the 1960s. Also, in a contemporary global context, artists and collectives such as Collectivo Cambalache in Colombia have creatively explored, through performance and audience participation, the idea of barter and alternative forms of economic exchange that, in turn, propose different ways that art can be experienced and valued in society.

'Artworks That Ideas Can Buy' was an interesting example of the work of Pietroiusti, who places significance on working critically within galleries/institutions as much as public spaces. However, while audience participation was promoted as a key element, the decision to do so was entirely a matter of viewer choice. This factor of choice is important to interactive scenarios, but, at the same time, one was also left with the impression that taking part in the 'auction' was an additional activity to the exhibition. It was possible to just contemplate the works on show. An undeniable outcome of visiting was to whet the appetite to experience more of the impressive legacy of this innovative artist, who, over more than thirty years, has demonstrated a vital originality of intellectual thought and valuably contributed to the development of conceptual and socially engaged art practices.

Writer detail:
Catherine Wilson, BFA(Hons), Dip World Art, is a writer and editor based in London. She has written about contemporary visual art, world art and culture for UK and international titles, including a-n Magazine, Artlink, Art & Australia and Art Asia Pacific, and contributed essays to museum and gallery exhibition publications.

catherinewilson@hotmail.com

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