Rubbish

HOARD: Towards an Archaeology of the Artists Mind

22 February 2013, 7-9pm
Building 3, City West Business Park, Gelderd Rd, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS12 6LX

Artists: Louise Ashcroft, Alice Bradshaw, Lucy Crouch, Gillian Dyson, Sarah Francis, Gill Greenhough, Fritha Jenkins, Hayley McColl, Christopher Mollon, Chris Wright, Adam Young.

A year-long project in Leeds. A group of artists are hoarding objects and artifacts relating to their practice: finished artworks, props, curiosities, documents, traces, plans, remnants.

These objects will become the starting point for new works and performances. The contents of the space will be a physical realisation of the minds of the artists as they evolve over the course of a year. Every two months, for an evening, the space will be open for viewings of this ongoing process of transformation, which will be recorded in the form of an online publication at the end of the year.

https://www.facebook.com/events/293720557424332

For HOARD, I have collected every item of rubbish from my art practice during 2012 that would have otherwise been thrown away. In defining what is related to my practice as an artist, I’ve kept the rubbish which is produced through activities such as the physical production of art objects, posting, transporting and exhibiting work, researching and visiting other events and exhibitions. I’ve also included in the collection the rubbish which is produced whilst undertaking these primary activities such as coffee drunk in the studio, wine drunk in meetings, tights laddered on art and detritus from medical circumstances impacting on my practice.

This HOARD documents one calendar year of my life in the form of the negatives of practice. Each object has a personal history and narrative connected to my practice and the various activities that comprise my artistic life. They are the offcuts, the misprints, the used and consumed and the watched, attended and discussed. Objects that do not appear in the HOARD include diaries, sketchbooks and notebooks, receipts needed for tax returns, books, materials that might by used for future works and any other objects considered to have potential use value. Objects which are considered works of art are also not included in the HOARD.

Each item of rubbish is photographed and catalogued in chronological order (month by month) and analysed. A total of 745 items have been collected and processed in this way.

Rubbish (2011) Berlin premiere at 9th Berlin International Directors Lounge

7-17 February 2013

300 cinematic excursions from 52 countries representing all six inhabited continents with photo shows, DJ’s, VJ’s, live music, performance art and more.

Naherholung Sternchen, (behind the Kino International/Rathaus Mitte)
U Schillingstrasse | Berolinastr. 7, 10178 Berlin

Daily from 6pm

OPENING RECEPTION, Feb. 7, 8pm
THE GROOVY DADA LOUNGE REVISTED, Feb. 8
FESTIWELT PARTY @ DL9, Feb. 13
INTERFILM PARTY @DL9, Feb. 15

www.directorslounge.net

DL9 festival programme:
http://berlinlounge.tumblr.com

http://www.facebook.com/events/450598351661047/

Museum of Contemporary Rubbish has been shortlisted for the inaugural Vantage Art Prize.

Vantage Art Prize
21 February 2013
Ellington House, Leeds Valley Park, Leeds, LS2 7DJ

45 artists make up the shortlist exhibition which will be held for one evening only during which the winners will be announced. The public will also be able to vote between 5-6pm.

Shortlist: Alex Millhouse-Smith – Alexa Molyneux – Alice Bradshaw – Anna Turner – Becki Griffiths – Ben Hawthornwaite – Bess Martin – Christian Braime – Darren Parker – David Steans – Ellie Harrison – Freddie Denton – Freya Kruczenyk – Grimes & Jones – Harry Meadley – Ian Kirkpatrick – James Nicholl – James Schofield – Jean McEwan – John Slemensek – Jonathan Turner – Lauren Pissochet – Liz Osborne – Martha Jurksaitis – Matt Maude – Matt Wheeldon – Naomi Gilby – Nigel Hayes – Patrick Bew – Paul Graham – Paul Hurley – Pippa Dyrlaga – Rhiannon Hunnisett – Rian Treanor – Rich Bunce – Ryan Thompson – Sara Zaltash – Sarah Gee & Emma Gee – Saz Johnston – Scott D’Arcy – Sharon Patrick – Sohail Khan – Steve Carrick – Testing The Razor – The Pavlov Syndicate

http://www.vantageartprize.com/

Currently Reading: John Roberts. 2007. The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling After the Readymade. Versus, London, UK. Preface & Introduction. Spring 2011. Variant 41, pp.43-7.

http://www.variant.org.uk/41texts/jroberts41.html

Roberts analyses the skill and labour of post-1960s conceptual art and raises the issue of authorship in relation to these dynamics of art commodity production. He asserts that there is much intellectual confusion about what constitutes skill in art after the readymade.

Handicraft and associated skills in the production of art are historically accepted as a gauge of authorship. With the introduction of the readymade, the notion that the artist as author must be considered under other conditions of production; where handicraft executed by the artist is no longer the primary criteria.

The notion of the artist’s handicraft, once pivotal to the question authorship, is regularly negated in works involving waste materials. Pre-used, readymade objects may have been shaped and given social history at the hands of anyone. Objects that are ordinarily used and discarded require no specialised handicraft to render them waste. Sometimes artists reintroduce handicraft into the treatment of waste materials in art production, but in the case of objects rendered rubbish at the hand of the artist as art production, the concept of anti-craft is suggested; positioning the artist on an equal level with the viewer in terms of object production.

Roberts is keen to point out that the hand of the artist is not limited to handicraft and stresses the importance of the “emergent totipotentiality or multifunctionality of the hand in artistic labour.”

Rubbish utilised in art is a type of readymade in the sense of being “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist”(1). Rubbish is very ordinary, but perhaps demands more of an elevation than the object with use-value or exchange-value. Rubbish has depleted its value, so the elevation to status of art could be considered a short-circuiting of this value system. This production of new function; the recycling of rubbish into art, creates new value where previously there was little or none, and, in a sense, is productive labour at its maximum in creating commodity from rubbish.

As well as considering Marx’s distinctions between productive and non-productive labour in the denotion of function and use-value of art, Roberts also distinguishes between intellectual labour and manual labour in discussing the readymade. “Modern artists are encouraged to think of themselves as active as artists beyond the ‘limited’ point of production, because, it is claimed, artists need to think of themselves as directly engaged in the mediation of the meanings of their work.”

The artist-as-producer, or author-as-producer as Benjamin writes(2), takes an active, exemplary and politicised position on their work from within and in response to the socio-political framework in which it was created. These are ideal conditions for autonomous authorship in the production of art. Skill and artistic labour, therefore, are no longer limited to commodity production exclusive of context, but rather must be considered in entirety of the interventions that render the readymade as art commodity.

This division between intellectual and manual labour and emphasis on context-specificity might position intellectual processes above manual processes in an artistic skills hierarchy. Processing rubbish in artworks often requires low levels of manual skill, although many exceptions do exist, and the artists’ skills are often found in the intellectual reconfiguration or recontextualisation of the objects. Perhaps this scenario is best seen in sculpture and assemblage in tradition of the readymade, as opposed to, say, photography and video where skill lies somewhere in the realm of manual labour but now more often than not in digital form.

If intellectual intervention supersedes manual labour in the treatment of rubbish as readymade in the production of art, can manual labour still play a part in the role of the artist, that is not delegated to assistants for example? I would argue that when artists do employ manual skills in art production, they do so consciously in an intellectual framework that acknowledges the histories and traditions of such skills in order to draw attention to the nature of manual labour itself and specific modes of production.

–

(1) Definition of the readymade. Breton, André and Éluard, Paul. 1991. Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme

(2) Benjamin, Walter. 1934. The Author as Producer.

Black Dogs Quarterly: Losing It / The Enemy

I’ve been working with Huddersfield duo Bristow & Lloyd on the first edition of a quarterly publication by art collective Black Dogs. The publication features contributions from Black Dogs and friends on the dual theme of Losing It / The Enemy. My contribution is the second image featured in this blog post.

Tonight is the launch at the Zephyr in Huddersfield.

Wednesday 30 January 2013, 6pm – Late.

Zephyr Bar, King Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2PZ.

Free entry

Join art collective Black Dogs for an evening of story sharing, musical turns, participative fun and multiple-choice quizzes in celebration of the publication of the first Black Dogs Quarterly. This edition is on the theme of ‘Losing It/The Enemy’ so the launch event acts as a timely opportunity to exorcise the last remnants of the post festive blues and indulge in some ale-accompanied group therapy. Bring your related stories, anecdotes, poems or songs and our compere will find a place for it in our ‘losing it’ open mic. Copies of the Quarterly and past Black Dogs publications will be available to browse and buy.

www.black-dogs.org