Next to Nothing: On the Price of Nothing and the Value of Everything
November 29, 2012
By Magdalen Chua
Daily Serving
Next to Nothing: On the Price of Nothing and the Value of Everything is an exhibition by Black Dogs, an art collective comprising members based primarily in Leeds and London that interrogates the notion of art produced for social transformation and develops platforms for art production and presentation to exist outside and against the values of a capitalistic art system. This approach is apparent both through the issues represented in their projects, as well as their methods of self-organization that emphasize collaboration and not-for-profit motives. Next to Nothing, resulted from a series of collective meetings around notions of value and led to the exhibition in Leeds. This second edition is currently presented at the +44 141 Gallery, SWG3 in Glasgow till 2 December 2011.
An exploration of the issue of value through artistic practice in the United Kingdom simmers against surrounding concerns regarding budget cuts in education and culture, with pressing questions raised on the way artistic production and education has become an inextricable part of the demands of a market-driven economic system. On an individual level, artists whose works are produced to circulate outside of the art market face continual questions on allocation of their time and labor based on conflicting criteria of what constitutes value. Next to Nothing reflects these concerns, with several works pushing to the fore the manner that methods of artistic production and circulation work with, re-shape or present alternatives to economic and social structures.
Luke Drozd’s Odyssey and Yvonne Carmichael’s Visual Merchandising address ideas of exchange and consumption within a retail environment, drawing on recognizable consumables and advertising to create sculptural forms that could exist comfortably in both art and retail spaces, raising the parallels in ideologies of consumption and transaction that underpin these similar modes of display.
Odyssey comprises two stacks of catalogues from Argos, a large retailer of home products in the United Kingdom whose tome-sized catalogues have become ubiquitous features in many households. The grecian origins of Argos and the title of the work, Odyssey create mythic associations, provoking one to think of the way this form of economic transaction through mass production, storage, and third-party distribution has created its own distinctive set of totems that circulate in contemporary culture.
Carmichael uses the rules acquired during a course on visual merchandising to create display units from a selection of supermarket housebrand products, accompanied by a checklist drawn from these visual merchandising rules with pointers from using a pyramid shape, having no more than three colors, to ensuring that products are “shoppable” from all sides. The act of making explicit these rules that exist in a retail environment, and bringing them into a gallery context, compels one to question presentation modes of artworks, and the way art experiences are created to induce a sense of desire or consumer satisfaction.
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