Hi Eleni, what are you exhibiting in the vitrine?
Hi Andrew—I am exhibiting a range of one-off packaging solutions that were created while making presents for friends. The display is titled Giveaways.
I usually work with a range of print processes to create wall mounted assemblages that imitate commercial paraphernalia. I constantly gather different quality papers, found wrappers, stickers, plastic bags, and I hold on to drawings, misprints, tests, photocopies, polythene sheets. I am excited by one-off ephemera and their relation to their commercial equivalents. Over time, the studio fills with bits—that may or may not be relevant. These objects grow in importance as they move around creating different constellations or possibilities.
Some fragments don’t find a place [in an artwork]. Still, it is hard to let go of them—so I use them to wrap presents for people I love. I always decide to wrap a present a bit too late so the process is characterized by a sense of urgency—fast decisions have something to do with it and so does desire. The packaging is half the gift. A lesser obvious unboxing experience; sometimes the receivers feel unsure as to if they are meant to open the present or keep it all in tact. Apart from being a gift, the packaging is also an ephemeral index of unresolved thoughts; an archive of citations now shared; not yets and could have beens momentarily on display.
I like when everyday processes such as tidying, transporting, negotiating, become opportunities for creating. But this is nothing new. Historically, art making has not been a standalone activity; instead it has been deeply intertwined with social and cultural practices. There is a playfulness in making do, solving problems, in being economical with one’s means. In such circumstances, every limitation is a resource. And within such restrictions I become less preoccupied with creating meaning, and more focused on feeling and doing.
The vitrine projects that I organize often provide a space for a particular strand of an artist’s practice or the opportunity to frame works in a certain way. How have you approached the possibilities and indeed limitations of the vitrine?
It is a joy to be invited to respond to the setting of the vitrine and its affordances. It is a presentation method I do not often have access to. Its museological connotations feel pertinent in attempts to validate art objects and methods of making that I consider personal.
I used to think that this mode of making—informal, quick, editioned—is not really part of my practice. In reality, it’s where a lot the work starts: by making postcards, or clothes, or contraptions. I am currently in the process of acknowledging that what I have considered preparatory, peripheral, or incidental to my practice is actually integral, or even constitutive. That it is important for me to be making without hesitation, alongside working in a considered and maybe more pressured way. That offering to friends what I become attached to is important. And so are livingness and relation: who and what I meet, or sit with, or spend time with—peers, formats, offcuts, studio spaces, contexts, tools, storage solutions.
Much of your work employs familiar graphic visual languages, questioning their role and value. Although a piece of museum furniture, the vitrine is also part of the commercial world – a space where products are displayed for sale and given value. Are you interested in exploring the issues of status in your work?
I am fascinated by what we give value to and how. It is a question that comes up for me in different ways. I am not sure if I want to explore status or ignore it—to use frivolity as a way of forming new relationships to things, images, debris. To undo certain value systems I have internalised.
In a world where everything is commodified, it is almost subversive when an object, action or process occurs without the purpose of generating worth. To do something just because you want it to happen. It is a coping mechanism; a way of shifting focus. I remember being at a sound event organised by the duo Mosquito Farm where artists had made DIY instruments out of found objects. It was unwarranted, bizarre and beautiful. Arthur (Bentley) was sitting next to me. After the second act, he turned to me and said: ‘Fuck, I love art’. It sounded sincere, obvious, essential. He had a huge smile on his face. I agreed.
But also, ‘Fuck, I love graphic design.’ Coming from the world of applied arts, I always wondered why design is seen as lesser to the fine arts, even if it is an art form deeply enmeshed in our day to day. It is hard to view graphic design as separate of its hyper-capitalised version, where it comes up as logos and apps. Yet to me, design is a system for organising thought, a tool for exchanging information, a process of caring.
In the world view of the design duo Studio Natty (Natanya Mark and Nathan Bather) making art for friends is the highest form of art. That consists of artwork that is sometimes made to please just one person, or just a few, and will be experienced primarily in private spaces.
The word giveaway refers to something given for free often aligned with promotional purposes. In this case it titles a series of personal works. Engaging with the language of the market is a way of bringing to the fore the incompatibility of creative labour with the dominant logics of profit margins and capital gains, and to acknowledge that I am making within such conditions; despite and because of them. Affected by them.
Thank you so much Andrew!