- Venue
- neo
- Location
- North West England
To my surprise, I found that neo:gallery22* is located inside a shopping mall in Bolton. The group’s latest excursion, neo:artprize, is an open call exhibition now in its second year. Attracting over 550 submissions, the prize has rightly garnered a lot of interest in a very short period of time. Being an artist-led initiative, I was there to find out if it differed from other opens and group shows.
With 66 works on show by 61 artists, it is hard not to resort to sweeping statements & generalisations, but it can safely be assumed that curating such a vast exhibition is incredibly ambitious if not outright conflictive. Hence, the quality of the work varies hugely. From excellent, thought-provoking pieces such as Rosie Farrell’s Infinite Playback or Gerard Young’s Bogof 1,2,3, to the downright student-like, the show is heterogeneous and not easy to convey in a few words.
The first impression is that the focus of the exhibition is on labour-intensive processes and repetition, favouring craft and form over content. However, this assertion is quickly replaced by the over-arching realisation that the one thing common to most works – and certainly to the more interesting pieces that carry the weight of the show – is that of the absence. The underlying thread is precisely a lack of something: the absence of the self, the body and the personal, a definite emptiness even on those works that depict the human form. The faces are blurred, the personality gone. A machine spins around, dripping a gloop of paint that turns into fine threads, an object that could not have been man-made. There are deserted, doom-filled landscapes, doors that lead to nowhere and empty architectural spaces. There is no I and certainly no Other.
Although the show favours two-dimensional pieces, the winner was Farrell’s Infinite Playback, a performance and audio piece. Agreeably one of the best works on show, this self-referential piece is composed of the sound of recording a vinyl disc, played back by the same vinyl, while on the opening night an actress performed a poem inspired by these same sounds. The embodiment and performance of language fills the piece, otherwise inert, void.
There are other remarkable pieces, such as Israeli artist Yoav Ruda’s The Dream Machine, proving that when humour is used poignantly, the results are not only entertaining but also deeply revealing. Using still-image-to-animation technology, the artist created a visual narrative through the talking images of Freud, Marx and other key figures of the 20th century.
The open brought together judges and curators of national recognition and it was perhaps this that made it almost indiscernible from other opens (the difference being that it was a blind selection). I believe that the sheer number of works on show threatened to make it a Jack-of-all-trades, but luckily the exhibition was bound together by those few pieces that spoke loud and clear.
On the up side, there was a real sense of achievement from the group and a refreshing honesty particular to artist-led initiatives. It is not detrimental that on the surface the show doesn’t reveal the organisation behind it; it is not overtly commercial and it certainly is more “national and international” than other shows that make this claim, such as the White Cube Open (where all bar one of the artists are based in London).
If I was to question anything, I would say that being an artist-led organisation, they have in their hands the opportunity to reconfigure or do away with the archetypal “open call”. In times when the value of art and culture is being questioned and the livelihood of artists more at risk than ever, it is perhaps time to subvert the process and question whether the way that opens rely on artists paying a submission fee is problematic. From the entry fee to the selection process to the prize giving, the time may have come to find other ways of finding, selecting, exhibiting and giving recognition to new artists.
After all, neo:artists have a support network that would make any artist in London wonder why they haven’t relocated “up North”. They are living proof of what can be achieved when artists work together and bring a varied set of skills, plus arduous determination and hard work. Surely if anyone is able to change the paradigm, it is artists like them.
* For those unfamiliar with the art scene outside London, neo:artists is a dream set-up for every artist-led initiative and organisation. This non-for profit organization began seven years ago and since 2009 benefits from a large gallery in a shopping mall right in the middle of Bolton – for free (they cover the cost of overheads only). They also have access to several empty shops within the mall for site-specific projects and smaller exhibitions.
The initiative now runs as a membership scheme that offers the use of a printing and 3D workshops and affordable rents for one of the 21 studios available just across the road from the gallery.
