INTERFACE

REVIEW

The Economy of the Gift

A Foundation, Liverpool
9 April - 22 May

Reviewed by: Kevin Hunt »

Congregated within A Foundation's cavernous Coach Shed stands a quietly contemplative workforce, clutching their crimson wave of oversized cards staunchly held above their heads. Behind this purposely driven crowd of modern day Umpa Lumpas, dressed in shiny carroty jeans, their beige and white counterparts salute with equal determination. Rebecca Lennon's I Could Never Live Like You Do is a film of strangely familiar faces, participating in what appears as a test of endurance; the stamina of the individual within the masses. Echoing the modernist ideals obeyed by the citizens of the Pil & Galia Kollectiv's The Future Trilogy series of films, Lennon's sectarian employees are more of a peacefully dogged bunch, their perseverance met with the reward of a break, only to return to the fold afterwards to endure once more.

The apparent shared characteristics present here - analogous to that of the behaviour of the commercial gallerist - were evident, although I wasn't sure how intentional that parallel in Lennon's performative exercise was. Nevertheless, this serendipitous equivalent was just one of the many correlations in an exhibition that oscillated with surprising consequences.

A Foundation's aim with the 'The Economy of the Gift', or so the blurb on their website would have you believe, was to "offer a unique experience for contemporary collectors in search of a boutique scaled art fair", but for me, something didn't quite add up. This wasn't a draft rich and wealthy in 'hard sell' flouncy affair that the likes of Frieze Art Fair had become. This space was drained of the indecipherable and vacant meaningless jibber jabber that is usually tossed about at such intentionally commercial jaunts. Here we had an art fair disguised as an exhibition, and a pretty good one at that. Dominated by Jacob Dahlgren's vastly sprawling Colour Reading Context blocking your path as soon as you walked through the door, this extensive abundance of ostensibly catalogued items piled together formed a hodgepodge collection of the tonal qualities of stuff. Within this vast landscape we saw ceramic tiles and painted bricks sat atop carpet samples, library books and chipboard. Closer scrutiny revealed Ryvita crisp breads intermingled between scouring sponges, lumps of polystyrene, matching napkins and fusty blocks of chocolate. This was a puzzling game of wondering why the objects here had been chosen, be it for conceptual or aesthetic reasons. There is no doubting that the Clas Ohlson catalogue is a pretty shade of blue, and the sheer array of pastel shades intrigued, but after all, what are you meant to make of a quintet of Paul Merton's unattractive faces gawping back at you from a redundant video cassette within a pool of carefully selected urban detritus?

What struck me more than anything about Dahlgren's gigantic colour coded sculpture though, was the sheer amount of space that had been given over to him to make this new work in a commercial context. Works produced for art fairs nearly always abided by their five by five metre square space, tightly packed in amongst their teammates with no real room for consideration, let alone curation. But quantity over quality was never a good thing. Here, four commercial spaces based in the north of England had been chosen by curator Ticiana Correa and in exchange they were asked to select four equivalent international counterparts with whom they would like to work. Like an art world tag team/pat on the back, it was a nice starting point for what eventually was to become an exhibition with all the conceptual slickness and finesse of a trendy eastern European warehouse show of hip new work. Each of the participating gallerists were then asked to select an artist from their corresponding galleries stable, subsequently giving a mere eight artists in total free reign within A Foundation's cathedral-like whitewashed warehouse space.

Mark Harasimowicz's gentle laboratory of linear scrawlings provided a contemplative space within the bigger works on show. Like stepping into the brain of a new rave scientist, the reassuringly repetitive clinking of old school projectors churning out lively little animations, contrasted with the fluorescent drawings and smudged charts the artist had casually pinned to the wall. This diagrammatic installation of simultaneously quaint yet high-tech sketches stood out as one of the best works here and alongside Eric Bainbridge's series of crude and blobby collages clung to the installation? exterior wall. I was impressed with the quality of both artists' works specially made for the exhibition.

Bainbridge's other work on show, the brazenly enlarged Self Portrait (After Rembrandt) contrasted with the diminutive scale of those other small scale works. This massive PVC banner hovering seven metres in the air was an enlargement of a much smaller collage, a mutilated image of beauty, gagged and blinded by the splotches that masked its identity. On this scale its vulgarity was heightened and in turn it triumphed as a heroically kitsch image with Modernist principals, valiantly draped in the vastness of the space.

Characteristically reminiscent of all those hellish trips to Ikea on Saturday afternoons, you usually visit an art fair to spot the trends and see what? new. Siphoning off what you can whilst drowning in an ocean of anti-climaxed inmates who, after several hours of wandering around, can't help but plan their escape route, whilst worrying they might have missed the one thing that was actually any good. However, A Foundation's bespoke art store was different, celebrating the average window shopping visitor as much as it did the affluent collector; cheque book at the ready, the impenetrably pointy shoes and thick rimmed glasses were absent, and in return, the artists?work was pushed to the forefront, given the room it needed to breath.

'The Economy of the Gift' succeeded in many ways as a coherent exhibition of interesting new work, but more importantly it demonstrated that an exhibition with a commercial stance in an otherwise uncommercial space allowed its audience the optimum amount of time and space with an artwork in order to really get to know it, to fall in love with it and ultimately, as A Foundation obviously intended, for the viewer to really understand if they would want to live with it for the rest of their lives. Quality reigned over quantity, in what will hopefully grow and grow into an annual affair greatly needed to boost the market in a city like Liverpool.

Writer detail:
I am an artist and director of The Royal Standard, an artist led studio, gallery and social workspace in Liverpool. I make sculpture using found, discarded objects, particularly abandoned pieces of furniture which I alter, transforming them into something new and have a particular interest in contemporary British and International sculpture.

sculptureartman@gmail.com| www.kevin-hunt.co.uk

Venue detail:
A Foundation »
67 Greenland Street, LIVERPOOL L1 0BY

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