We may or may not have already mentioned that back in June, Will Marshall from Scaffold Gallery is curating an exhibition at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester and kindly asked us to be a part of it! The show is happening next month and it’s based around emerging artist’s relationship to money, and making money with their practice. It’s a really great space; 2 floors and plenty of room, so we wanted to make sure we had a good idea for it. We were considering the exhibition in Wigan and how we had several different works all contributions to an overall narrative. This was a way for us to be ambitious but simultaneously continue down the subtle road which we’re interested in pursuing; anyone can be heard if they shout but it takes some thoughtfulness to be heard while whispering. We like to think about it being similar to Muhammad Ali’s famous saying ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see.’ which is a lovely way of describing something which is graceful but also strong, whether physically or mentally.
In this exhibition the narrative we’re going to construct is that of an artist (us) trying to make themselves 'sellable' but failing. The current works themselves will come in the form of a postcard rack full of postcards of our previous works, a monitor which has a Sid and Jim advert on it or some kind of explainer video of our artistic practice that's made by someone on the website fiverr, an abandoned signing table of signed photos of the Sid and Jim stock image (attached) with a roll out ad board with the same image on it and then a crumpled up (but still visible) artist cv on the ground. Our plan is to have them distributed throughout the space as opposed to being in one place; similar to a trail of breadcrumbs.
It's a variety of failed attempt to be successful/noticed; making postcards which haven't sold, a film which is supposed to act as a promotional tool but just seems impersonal and weird, a sort of fan meet up where no one showed and a cv that never got a the owner a job which has consequently been discarded.
