Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm, 14-16 February 2014
Part 3/5
Saturday morning was spent digesting the literature while Toby napped: Supermarket exhibition catalogue and magazine (Issue #4). One side lists the exhibitors as the catalogue part and on the flip side there’s more of a contextual geopolitical narrative as the magazine part. I read the short interviews with a couple of the various nationalities represented at the 2014 fair. The interviewer Izabella Borzecka, project coordinator at Supermarket, asks each interviewee: What values are given priority in the arts sector in your country?, Which values do you think should be prioritized?, and, Do you think it will be changed in the near, or far, future? This article, entitled Differences, was probably my favourite part of the catalogue/magazine; illuminating each interviewee’s perspective on the same or similar global and country-specific issues facing the arts in their countries. It was just a shame that each exhibitor did not feature in the article but with so many that would’ve been a publication in itself.
After lunch on Saturday I headed back up to Supermarket by myself to get some quality fair time. I had a more in depth chat with the South Africans and they told me about the Meetings programme that exhibitors could sign up for; a mediated series of conversations that formally networked the selected exhibitors (exhibitors had proposed ideas/exhibitions to the fair and been selected/curated). I’d also given them a newspaper previously and asked if they’d had a chance to look through it. They said they liked it very much and particularly the Shrigley drawing, comparing the drawing styles. They had a book for sale themselves at SEK300 which was very nice but a bit pricey for my budget. Their project involved documenting the local Cape Town scrap collectors’ trolleys and the processes at the recycling plant through photography and video. The photographs were titled with the latitude and longitude coordinates wherethey found and without the owner/collector in the frame (to not make them the spectacle, they said). It reminded me a little of Simona da Pozzo’s film Exclave we showed in Fundada Artists’ Film Festival 2011 with the geographical mapping aspect.
Upstairs on the fifth floor I saw some large flowers made out of newspaper in the Ormston House, Limerick booth. I thought it would be good to talk about newspapers with the artist/gallery and asked the guy manning the booth about them. It turned out they were actually cabbages made on archival paper in workshops with specific local groups, with photocopied political articles, by Alan Phelan. He was sat at the Oonagh Young Gallerybooth and I went and had a good chat with him and Oonagh about newspapers, Supermarket and the Irish and Manchester art scenes. The notion of copying came up, photocopying and copyright and the wider subject of representation. Oonagh was interested in the price and quality of printing, and we agreed it was quite pricey at £5.55 per paper but it had been the best quote I could find online for such a small run. She said the quality was pretty good but small, independent printers can often do very good prices and mentioned one local to her in Dublin for future reference. They also said it was a substantial newspaper and piece of research, although it didn’t feel too heavy/weighty. I said it had taken a fair few months to put together which Alan laughed and said only a few months?
We also talked about the professionalism of the fair and also that the whole secretive nature of the after parties was a bit strange. The pretence of exclusivity just didn’t sit comfortably. But the level of organisation, selection of exhibitors and the atmosphere in general were great. They also told me about the Irish Embassy promising several cases of Guinness as 3 Irish galleries were presenting at Supermarket, but the delivery had fail to arrive for the party! I told Allan and Oonagh about my vague idea to sit at Paper Gallery’s booth atallotted times and invite people to talk rubbish with me and Allan pointed out that our meandering conversation could constitute rubbish!
