Working Title

These words are by Markus Lloyd regarding Working Title, an exhibition and ongoing workshop at aspex gallery, Portsmouth.

Raft of the Medusa (Pt.2) – Mad Marxism

“The discovery of the material, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of material into the [Working Title gallery space, has] removed two chief defects of earlier [exhibitions]. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the [creative] activity of human beings, without grasping the objective laws governing the development of system[s] [of making]… in the second place, the earlier [exhibitions] did not cover the [creative impulse and curiosity] of the masses of the population, whereas [WT] material [has] made it possible for the first time to study [those impulses and satisfy the curiosity] of the masses and the changes in these conditions.”

Again, I’m hacking away, with a machete of misappropriation – this time, it’s Vladimir Lenin on Marxism. Because, isn’t there something inherently communist about Working Title. It’s definitely a utilitarian. And it’s egalitarian. Some might think it a little ‘vegetarian’ in its Greenness, its recycling ideals – but, thank heavens, for Scrapheap Challenge and Robot Wars, which lend WT a garden shed/Mad Max charisma. The concept of making transparent the physical and mental machinations of practitioners, so others can examine, test and partake in an otherwise obscure process, well, if that’s not Communism I don’t know what is. Working Title is an attempt at equalising the experience of art, for everyone to feel empowered whatever their chosen role. It’s not about ‘social mobility’ – where education and opportunity means audience could become artist, or visa versa – because participants in WT are introduced at a common level, there’s no reason for an artist to feel superior to the audience, visa versa, the audience can enjoy the experience without feeling patronised. Plus, the usual ‘governing’ role of the gallery (selecting, arranging and essaying) is limited to the seemingly menial – to that of House Elf (kind-of magical slave, my non-Potterian friends). WT is communal, its concerns are productivity and commonwealth and social functionality. It’s as ‘Red’ as Tony Benn’s y-fronts. We agree, don’t we, Brother & Sister Art-Artisans-ists, Brother & Sister Audience-Artisans?Yes, yes agree us lackeys of aspex.

Naw. Of course, Working Title isn’t Marxist. It isn’t anything but what it is and what it will become. I could approach it from a plethora of political or philosophical or theoretical directions, shoehorningWT into them. I must say, it’s WT‘s superlatively plastic nature that excites me. It also worries me.

Fundamentally, Working Title‘s is a simple premise. A pile of unwanted stuff, a selection of artists who recycle stuff in various ways to create artworks, an audience primed by simplicity to interpret the show themselves (allowing for a greater depth, breadth to the interpretative material aspex can make available). Great. But. Without artwork framed in an expanse of white space, which bestows gravity on anything, where is the mutual subject that drives discourse between maker and viewer? The commonality is the scrapheap. Is this what visitors discuss with the artists? ‘What can you make out of that old green handbag and those plastic coat hangers?’ some punter might ask. Well, there is a conversation to be had, few jokes to be made. Only, is it the conversation we’d hope for? It boils down to what a gallery like aspex ought to be delivering. Should the experience of visiting be an ‘entertainment’? Or, ought a visit be ‘educational’ in its broadest sense? Where do we pitch, to the larger audience of those generally disinterested in contemporary visual art, who expect us to convince them or confirm their preconceptions (the best of all, those with no interest, expectations or concern, as they leave as they arrived, untouched)? Or do we fixate on our natural audience, those who want to explore the world through the eye and experience of others, who are effected by visual art – who seek it out, be they practitioner and/or consumers? And we all know, you can’t please everybody…

These words are written by Markus Lloyd about ‘Working Title’, an exhibition and workshop at aspex gallery, Gunwharf.

Raft of the Medusa (Pt 1) – B.S.

Is Working Title a ‘Big Society’ happening? No, honestly, I’m asking (yeah, okay, provocatively). The ambition of Cameron-Clegg’sB.S. is ‘to put more power and opportunity into people’s hands’. Isn’t that what Working Title aims to do – to allow its audience the chance to participate alongside so-called professionals in shaping a beneficial experience. Everyone has an opportunity to participate, to influence outcomes, to ‘do better’. Artists and audience are on an equal footing, they start with a mess (of bric-à-brac) and some resolve – to make sense and use of stuff. Now, I’m going to hack the Governments own document, Building the Big Society (hack it like a Texan Chainsaw Massacre):

We want to give [artists and audience] the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build [what] they want. We want [Art] – that form[s] the fabric of so much of our everyday lives – to be bigger and stronger than ever before. Only when [artists and audience] are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all [in the gallery]

Do you see? Working Title is handing over greater responsibility to its audience, they get to facilitate what gets made, they can enter into discourse with service providers (I mean, really, isn’t that what today’s artists are meant to be), and they can take practical steps, make the art they want to see. All very B.S. to me.

But.

Working Title isn’t a foisting of aspex‘s responsibilities as a gallery on to the shoulders of its audience. It’s the role of the aspexteam to articulate the space, the variant approaches, to contextualize (excuse me, I do love to drop a ‘contextualism’) and to facilitate participation. WT isn’t a case of sink or swim (though, at first, it can seem pretty ‘not waving but drowning’). We’re all in this together. If you feel excluded, well, you’ve obviously not attempted to glue a moustache of feathers on to the upper lip of a broken badminton racquet, or given a pie tin twenty-seven Spork legs and a hunchback of pillowy satin. If you feel excluded, you’ve not explored the library of this, all the books that inform on those artist in the WT show and the many who’d like to be in WT (blistering with images and thoughtfulness). Aw, shucks, you can’t visit and feel excluded – we’ve even got an Animateur, Jo Willoughby, on Tues/Thurs, to bring the whole kit kaboodle to life for you.

What the artists get to begin with, the audience gets too. So, on day one, what everyone had to look at, to contemplate, was the compartment of bric-à-brac. We’re almost three weeks in, we’ve had five artists feed on our plate of leftovers (some feeding on the leftovers of other’s leftovers). Successful amalgams now exist, free of their maker, about the building. There’s Will Cruickshank’s ever-spinning parasol suspended above the café, his ‘Profile-Drawing Contraption’ situated (for now) in the workshop space. There are sketches of ideas as actual objects by Kate Parrot (an effective small-scale work hinged to the gallery wall, just inside the workshop area, will sustain itself, I believe – so, becoming an artwork). There’s still evidence of Paul Matosic’s object-scapes, eroded by the hunger of the other artist’s instincts (an Atlantis disappearing). Andy Parker’s succulent interventionist drawings are giving way to, what seems to be, a raft on which he can either escape or negotiate the clutter (a real Raft of the Medusa, made of cannibalized materials by a cannibal of stuff). All this is there, some made (kind-of) distinct of the debris of makings, the rest embroiled in the scraps they’ve been birthed from. Stuff has already shifted through the play of a number of the artists – we’re planning to track elements, document their adventures. What the audience gets to see, now, is the sex, the pregnancy, the birth and lifespan of idea-objects – all the action tucked away out-of-sight during ‘Open Studios’, the what if I stick this into that phase, the outtakes. What the artists get is an audience with question rather than expectations…

Markus Lloyd