There is an artwork made for an art space, which looks like a white cube (but is only really a frame, and has no walls) which contains a number of things. The objects dangle and move around. They are all different. There is a squiggle of black wire, a plastic lemon, a cardboard circle with a white inside circle, a small rock, two 3D spheres of coloured paper, a squiggle of copper-coloured wire, a pink balloon, an apple, a shiny box with a squiggle of LED lights on wire, a traditional-looking wire mobile and a small full-length picture of me with my arms up wearing a t-shirt which says “#jstfu”.
This artwork is being shown in a domestic flat, along with other artworks, and the space has no furniture, or kitchen. So, it is not a flat that is lived in just now. The walls are mostly bare plaster, some are bare brick. The floor is bare wooden floorboards, no lino, no carpet. It has been named as a gallery, but this gallery has no white walls, apart from one. We arrange the artworks knowing how to do it. We consider the arrangement in relation to the space and the other artworks, giving each its own space.
I’ve just finished re-reading Brian O’Doherty’s book, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (expanded edition, 1986). I thought that I should remind myself about the task that someone gave themselves to articulate meaning from the spaces where we exhibit and experience contemporary art. The original 3 articles – I. Notes on the Gallery Space, II. The Eye and the Spectator, and, III. Context as Content, which were published individually in US art magazine Artforum in 1976, stand as the core texts. O’Doherty has also included an additional article, IV. The Gallery as Gesture, written in 1986. He also includes an Afterword where he reflects on the work and ideas that he wrote about ten years earlier, which he now seemed a bit unsure about. I know the feeling. It has been a useful re-read, but the language that Doherty uses seems overly academic for the subject, like he’s trying too hard to be meaningful, philosophical, and sort of ironic and humorous.
I understand what he’s saying in terms of –
“The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is ‘art’[1]
and “The wall, the context of the art, had become rich in a content it subtly donated to the art”[2].
But please, keep it simple. Things brought into a selected space become art; as long as there is nothing else in there. But there is now a bit of a conundrum – what with spaces that are painted a colour, God forbid, or have walls which are rough, unplastered with cables hanging out of them, and so not ‘white cubes’. Therefore, can we tell when something is art when it is not inside the white cube?
I have arranged and hung a number of exhibitions in my lifetime: problem-solved the perfection of the gallery spaces, painted many a wall white, moved the artworks around to determine the sweet spot that it needed to be placed or hung on the wall. There was always the pressure to do it the ‘correct’ way, I had learnt to do it correctly. It became a habit. We all realised that it was done the way it should be. It does help artists to know these conditions, so that whatever they make and display is art.
The context of a gallery space is safe ground.
Phew.
The lyrics in Steely Dan’s 1977 song, “Home at Last“, spring to mind –
To complicate matters, the musician David Byrne, in his book How Music Works (2012)[4] explains that the spaces where music is played is really important and gives context to the music being performed. He says that musicians make music to fit these spaces, so the space is where you would hear a certain type of music. Music has a broad range of styles, therefore various types and scales of spaces exist. Also, the walls of the music venue spaces act in a reverse way to a white cube gallery. The music venue walls are recording the sounds (and atmosphere) in the room, they become saturated. White cube gallery walls are rigid, they don’t absorb, they just project from their hard surface.
So, the thing is…
Do we make our art/music as a thing in itself, and therefore is self-defined or do we make our art/music knowing if we put it into a space where things are seen/experienced it will be defined as art/music through the venue and by those who experience it?
Art has an evolving range of the styles and exhibiting spaces where we experience it, but do artists make their work to fit the white cube gallery, knowing it’s where it would be seen as art?
Hence, knowing the context defines what things are. But how and when do we know the context.?
The artwork which I have made for this exhibition has its own white cube. The artworks inside the white cube are safe together, in a group, sharing the space, giving space to each other. They are different shapes and colours. They are all three-dimensional. They are geometric, abstract or realistic.
They all seem to be happy together.
Home at last.
[1] O’Doherty B. Inside the white cube: The ideology of the gallery space. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1986. p. 14.
In my past life I’ve had a number of significant cultural and personal experiences while going about my studies and jobs within the arts and design world. On reflection and going through old photos I have kept I could place myself in these memorable scenarios and make connections with who I am and how these particular experiences inform my interests and how they might form some sort of ‘self-portrait’. It may be that by placing myself beside these people Im looking for recognition of my own work, but it’s more that I was there. I have photos of me in direct relation to these people, directly or indirectly.
I firstly made a series of posters which included just images of me and the other people along with contextual words (place, dates, works), as a series of four. They are like very very short visual essays. Text and image. What else needs to be said?
Anyway, when presenting these works, I have had to mostly tell the background stories about the text and images – are they too obscure? I’m not keen on over explaining works, they are what they are. I work with context, I include and I am influenced by narratives, I find them interesting – the serendipitous connections, new angles and information that others bring to the work, I don’t presume people don’t know what I’m showing them. They may know none of it, some of it or all of it, and add to it.
The context of these works spans a period from 1982 to 1998. I was at college studying product design, then I installed contemporary art exhibitions, then curated exhibitions.
SOTTSASS At art college, I was a product design student. Not an artist or not a maker. We made prototypes of ideas for products that didn’t exist, yet. I loved it. Having had to repeat a year from failing in interior design, I had found my niche. There was problem-solving, thinking of new ways to do things. Making ideas. I designed lamps, knives, clothes stand and I was taught how to render products. We used the spray booth with glee. Making our forms from wood and aluminium, and laying on a sandwich of primers, wet ‘n dry, top colour coat and sometimes clear lacquer. I loved the ritual of the paint job. It was like custom car-ing your new idea. Like those American west coast fetish-finish sculptures. They were like nothing that existed: Smooth. The course was good in encouraging us to explore social and cultural references, which we would use to inspire or communicate our products.
We also made trips out in Scotland. We went to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the Caithness Glass factory, Hospitalfield, Arbroath, and McIntosh furniture factory. We went up to Lewis and Harris, all 9 of us, in a hired campervan. Two of us could drive, so we had turns about. Some got to sleep in the van, the others in a tent we had brought with us. We took turn about with this arrangement too. We visited a weaver in Harris, all cramming into her work shed. She said she would pee on the Harris tweed fabric once it was woven. We believed her. We went to London too. Visiting the V&A, Design Museum and the shops in Covent Garden. There was the One-Off studio run by designer and maker Ron Arad. He reused existing products and turn ed them into new exciting ideas. There was the Rover seats, car ariel lamps. I remember the staircase down into the workshop basement made of timber railway sleepers made a heavy bas note when they were tread on – they were performance products.
In September 1982 we also went to Milan, Italy. Only 4 of us went, including our tutor. He knew a previous student, Gerry Taylor, who had got a job with the design company Sottsass Associates, so we had a direct way into what was the Memphis design phenomenon. I was a big fan, still am. I had written an essay about Memphis, and looking back, my early ideas seem to be influenced by their forms, colours and experimental ideas as how products can be. Anyway, we were in Milan, staying in a hotel above some rock club. We met some of the other designers who were working for Sottsass, and were able to go to the Sottsass studio, where we sat waiting to meet Ettore Sottsass, who was across the room from us – but we didn’t, directly. He was busy, we were just students from Dundee, they were designing bus stop shelters for Turin, so time was tight. Our tutor asked us the draw out a few of our ideas in preparation that we might get a moment with him, that was nerve wracking. I drew out a desk lamp that I had designed and prototyped. We were taken into another studio space where we got to meet and share our time with Michele De Lucchi, George Sowden, Nathalie Du Pasquier, and significantly for me in retrospect, Daniel Weil. Weil was a friend of Taylor, and had come to Milan with him. His work was included in the 1982 Memphis exhibition but his association as a formal Memphis designer was not encourage it seemed. His design work – radios, fruit bowls, lamps and clocks were influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s artworks and ‘readymades’. Their creativity came from conceptual art ideas, crossing the boundaries between art and design. This suited me fine, and still does. Interestingly, Weil doesn’t mention his inclusion with Memphis on his Wikipedia biography.
While we were in Milan, Memphis had an exhibition opening for the 1982 Milan furniture Fair, so we got to hang-out and experience all the new products and ideas that they had produced. I had seen a photo of Sottsass leaning against an important new furniture product, the Beverly sideboard. I loved that piece, so a had my tutor take a photo of me trying to take up the same pose as I had seen Sottsass doing.
WILSON It’s 1987, and I’m working at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. Mark Francis was the Director and he’s got a great address book of contacts of interesting artists. He brings in John Cage, Jean Michel Basquiat, Nancy Spero and many others. I think I was helping with the Dan Graham exhibition when Mark came down to the gallery downstairs and asked if anyone wants to help install the Richard Wilson work at the RSA.
“I’ll do it!”, I say “Okay, it’s an installation with oil, and they need a wooden platform built in the gallery. Can you help with that?” asks Mark “Yeah, I can do that” I say
The exhibition at the RSA was a show of the Saatchi art collection. It included Warhol, Rothenberg, Stella, Kiefer and Schnabel. Very big names. The RSA co-hosted the exhibition, and at this time Charles Saatchi and his wife Doris Lockhart, had constructed a big collection of mainly paintings and sculptures by American and European artists. This was pre-Saatchi collecting the YBA artists (Hirst, Emin, Lucas etc) and pre the Sensation exhibition times. But Saatchi had just purchased the Richard Wilson 20:50 artwork, and wanted to show it as soon as possible. Saatchi had seen and purchased the work at Matt’s Gallery in London. This gallery was run out of artist Robin Klassnik’s Hackney studio, and had enabled Wilson to make this work there. The Edinburgh exhibition seemed good timing. Also, good timing for me.
I joined another guy Andrew, who was from London at the RSA to start to work on the installation. Richard Wilson and Robin Klassnik were there, planning out how to practically do this. The gallery room was downstairs to the left of the front door. It had windows along one wall, which looked out onto the Mound area, and doors at the far end which had a strange arrangement of steps and handrail in front of it.
“Can we remove this handrail, it’s in the way?” asks Klassnik “I’m afraid not” say the RSA “Why not?” questions Klassnik. “The room needs to be clear to the walls, so we’ll see what we can do, but it might have to go”.
We build a 4-foot-high wooden platform across the whole room. Shaped around the room, and handrail. We use a long water filled hose attached to small ladders and stretched it across the room to check so that the platform is perfectly flat. Richard and Robin then worked on installing the sump oil, so that the dense material would act as a black mirror, reflecting the room in the oil. Very magical.
I didn’t get involved with bring in the oil, which came in the window, but during the duration of the exhibition while everyone else went back to London, I had the task every week to go underneath the platform. The oil was only 4 inch deep on top of the platform, and I had to unscrew a panel at the end of the walkway, collect the oil-filled buckets from under the platform and then slowly empty them back into the oil pool. I felt I was getting to know the work by taking care of it.
Over the years I experienced the work in London at the Saatchi collection in Boundary Road and in County Hall building at Westminster, when Saatchi used that space. It would be good to see it again. I never met Richard or Robin again. I was just the keen hired help to get the job done. I think I maybe saw them across the room, at a Saatchi opening in the 1990s, as the YBA work took over the art scene.
Then, last Saturday, 9th May 2026, I’m at the opening of Jake Harvey and Tjibbe Hooghiemstra’s exhibition at Mark Haddon’s No.31 gallery in Duns in the Scottish Borders. And I look into the mingling crowd there, it’s made up of mainly older artist types, all chatting away. I spot someone I think is Richard Wilson. I go across, he’s with friends, but I just butt in.
“Are you Richard Wilson?” I ask “Yes, it’s me, nice to meet you, who are you? “, he says
I then launch into my memories I had with him and Klassnik back at the RSA, installing his work. Richard was also in the Bow Gamelan Ensemble with Anne Bean and Paul Burwell, who I had also seen in Edinburgh, at a performance of their metal bashing and noise making in the St Mary’s Cathedral in the 1980s.
“Yes, of course, it was amazing. And in Dundee, at the art school just a few years ago, all the Bow Gamelan archive and everything” Richard recalls. “Yes, I saw that too, we were that close then, but now here we are, an unplanned but meant meeting? ” I say.
ERNST In the early 1990s, I was involved with a Max Ernst exhibition which focused on his sculptures. One particular sculpture, titled Capricorn is a bit of an icon, not just for its large size and heavy weight, or its form as a large throne-like seat which depict animal-like king and queen figures, but as a key component for a photograph of Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in Sedona, Arizona where they had moved to, by John Kasnetsis in 1948. The photograph depicts Ernst leaning over the back of the sculpture; just his head, shoulders and forearms are visible. Tanning has reclined on the sculpture with her eyes shut, leaning into the strong arms of the king figure. This original sculpture had been made of concrete, scrap iron, and shells in their Sedona garden. Once they had left in 1957 to live in France, plaster moulds of the sculpture were taken and it was cast in bronze a number of times.
When the Ernst exhibition opened in Edinburgh, in 1990, Dorothea Tanning was present at the opening and we all got introduced to her and she shook our hands. In retrospect, this was quite a moment, having since then, visited a major Tanning retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2019, which gave her the status her own art work deserved. Also, while in Edinburgh, she was keen to buy some Scottish knitwear, so my colleague Susan took her in her car up to the St. Andrews Woollen Mill to buy some cashmere.
Following the Edinburgh exhibition, we organised the exhibition to tour in the USA to Newport Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Indianapolis Art Museum during 1991. My job for the US tour was to arrange the transport of the artworks from venue to venue, and assist with the installation of the exhibition at the venues. The Capricorn sculpture was over a tonne weight, so I was always amazed to go to the venues and see the sculpture had arrived safely in the loading bays of the museums.
For the exhibition and tour, we produced some Ernst merchandise. Posters, cards and t-shirts. I carried a suitcase of t-shirts from Edinburgh to the American museums every time I needed to go to the venue, it seemed to be cheaper than posting them, so I was the courier. I also didn’t get one for myself at the time. The t-shirts have become a rare garment, and over the years, I completely forgot what image was used on the t-shirt. I thought it was just a bare-chested Ernst. So, only over a year ago, Susan told me that she had found two of the original t-shirts, and it was the Kasnetsis photograph of Ernst and Tanning on the front. She wanted to keep the originals, but…
“Do you want us to make a version of the original t-shirt?” she asked “Yes please, I think that would be amazing” I said.
So, after 35 years, I finally got my own Max Ernst t-shirt (see my previous 3 Art Stories text for more).
SIEM In 1997, I was asked to curate an exhibition of contemporary German sculptors. Nicola, who I had worked with at the CCA in Glasgow, gave me this opportunity. The exhibition had already gained some funds and a title, The House in the Woods, but there were no artists selected and no other venues other than the CCA to show it at.
“Sure, I’ll do that” I said nervously, “I think I’m ready for this”, and off I went.
So, I’m in Bern, Switzerland at the Kunsthalle, where Wiebke Siem had an exhibition of her sculptures. They looked like large toys, carpets, wigs, dresses, stones and fur coats, but they weren’t these things. They were sculpture, I was informed. They may look like those things but they are definitely sculptures. They were to be looked at as art, not functional objects. It was easy to misinterpret them as they looked very much like the items they represented, but the materials and scale were not quite right. Maybe that’s the point. Sculpture can be anything. Duchamp’s readymades come to mind. It may look familiar but it isn’t what you think it is. I really liked Wiebke. We talked through which of her artworks could be included in the exhibition. She was a friendly creative contemporary German sculptor, and I needed them, for the exhibition.
On my trip to select and gain permission to include certain artists’ artworks in the exhibition, I went to see Thomas Schütte in Düsseldorf. He was very cool, had a maid and gave me catalogues, confidence and chocolate cake (see my previous 3 Art Stories text for more). He showed me images of works he’d like to include and where I could loan them from.
“There’s a museum in Keil which has some of my work, try them” he advised me.
So, I did. They had The Studio on the Hill work, which was a small red-coloured model, a large piece of green felt material and a very long yellow ribbon. When we showed it, we just put lots of cardboard boxes under the green felt to create the hill and placed the studio on the top with the ribbon cascading down it to create a pathway, to make the sculpture.
I’m glad I convinced Schütte to be in the exhibition. I think I might have said the right things, as he came to the opening in Glasgow, along with Wiebke Siem, and Marielle Neudecker who was also in the exhibition. The exhibition also included artworks by Martin Honert and Stephan Balkenhol, but I never met them; I just loaned their artworks from the Saatchi Collection and a gallery in Cologne. I did try and get other artworks from museums in Frankfurt and from other artists I wanted to include such as Katherina Fritsch, but they wouldn’t have worked as the exhibition needed to tour in the UK – which was another challenge.
Aberdeen Art Gallery signed up early on in the schedule, and I just needed another one to justify the funding. I tried various other venues in the UK, and eventually convinced Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast to programme the exhibition.
After all that, I saw the exhibition in Glasgow and Aberdeen but I never saw the exhibition in Belfast. I presume it happened, as I was sent some newspaper cuttings, which I included in my after exhibition report.
I wrote the following short texts in 2003, as a way to start to write about contextual narratives of my experiences in exhibition making, culture, and the world around us. They mention certain artists, their artwork, my work and tasks, and my memories and interpretation of the moments. Looking at them now, there is a naïve enthusiasm, and even wonder, that I was even connected to any of this.
Max Ernst T-Shirts
I’m getting on a long flight plane to LAX and there seems to be a general lack of other passengers. I find my seat and try to relax, but it all passes amazingly quickly and suddenly were banking into a neon cityscape, looking down on the streets and moving cars, just like a movie. I arrive in LAX at 11pm, now what? I’ve got to get to Newport Beach, and that’s at least 30 miles south. Every time I travel, I’m amazed that you always find your way to your hotel, even when you have no idea of where you’re going. I scout around the main exit where there are hordes of people all doing the same, jumping on and off the right and wrong buses, but it seems I don’t need a bus, it’s a van taxi. Orange County? And were off, I hope he knows where he’s going, then it seems he doesn’t and he pulls out some huge street manuals and makes some calls, eventually we’re at the Marriott Hotel, very late and its 90º., I check in. I get to my room and there’s a large basket of fruit and a bottle of South African white wine from the museum as a bit of a welcome, which is nice, and three round chocolates on my pillow. I’m looking at my map, do I walk or take a taxi? the museum doesn’t seem far, in fact it’s just along the road. So, I’m down in the lobby with my large bag of Max Ernst t-shirts, merchandise for the exhibition, on my way out, the concierge wants to get me help but I’m ok, don’t worry, I’ll be fine. It’s only 8am and I’m sweating and walking, which seems to be what everyone else isn’t doing. I’m the only walker with a heavy bag, and I’m getting looked at by the passing traffic, what is he doing? In this heat? I get to the museum and there is a slight earth tremor, I’m sure, but I drag in the t-shirts which are quickly displayed in the museum shop. You carried them all this way? Why not courier them? We did, by me.
The exhibition installation team welcome me with smiles and questions, these guys could be anywhere, it’s the same routine, but these guys are very polite, all have tans, are relaxed and as I find out at lunchtime, all have air-conditioned cars with those seat belts which go over you automatically. We go to Laguna Beach for lunch, a small Mexican café. We see some surfers, my guys don’t do that stuff, never have, it’s just for rough guys they say.
Basquiat Painting
In 1985, The Fruitmarket Gallery held an exhibition of the young NY artist and friend of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat. The show was all his new paintings on canvases, wooden panels and doors. The show was a coupe for the gallery and the director Mark Francis, who always had his finger on the art pulse, and regularly pulled off these unique ‘time is right’ shows. Basquiat came over to Edinburgh for the show, and while he was there, he was asked to paint some paintings right there in the gallery. I think four stretchers were bought in each approx. 100cm x 60cm. He proceeded to get to work, using some photocopies of his drawings and squeezing full tubes of acrylic over the surfaces. He got it everywhere even up the office wall in his enthusiasm. He then went out to Jenners and got a full tartan suit made for himself as he was in Scotland and had the cash.
I missed the opening. I was meant to meet someone on the corner of Cockburn Street but they had already gone in and I missed the whole thing so we just went to the pub and I never ever saw him or met him. At the time my sister was running the Fruitmarket café and all week had been serving him up with various concoctions and choice homemade product. He seemed to love the food and the attention, so in thanks he left one of the Fruitmarket-made painting to her. The artist and his entourage moved on but the painting remained. She didn’t really like it, not her thing. So, it was left to the gallery to do with whatever.
Time went on the gallery put on lots of shows I was involved in many. The directors changed and moved on, the gallery needed cash, there was yet another crisis. “Where’s that Basquiat painting? asked someone, ” Isn’t that now worth something now that he’s dead? It should be but who would want to buy it?, I’m sure there is a market for it , probably in the USA”. So, I was asked to package the thing up, as it had been in one of the offices all this time. I got it down to the gallery store and started building a strong box and packing for the painting to be shipped over to Chicago, there was someone who knew someonelse who might be interested. So, it was crated and labelled to go, but before I did this and never saw it again, Brian wanted to be photographed with the painting, posing in his own imitable way, we had a bit of fun with that painting. Then off it went.
Thomas Schütte’s Chocolate Cake
Nicola White gave me my breakthrough curating opportunity some years ago, she had had an idea for a German sculpture show, which worked on the concept that romantic ‘childlike’ work also has a darker side, the show became ‘The House in the Woods’ and it toured round a few art venues. I wanted to do it but the artists weren’t selected, never mind the work or the catalogue so lots to do, a research trip to get the artists involved was needed. The trip started in Munster at the Skulptur Projekt with Rachel but I was soon on my own on a train to Cologne in search of works for the show. I eventually find the Johnen and Schöttle gallery to meet up with the gallery assistant who probably wonders who I am, but she is extremely pleasant and helpful, pulling out various works and slides of artist’s works for me to consider. They could lend me some older Martin Honert pieces but nothing new as they are too expensive, what about these Pia Strumberg works? their possible, not sure, maybe another show.
Later the next day, I’m wandering about outside the main station in Dusseldorf, home of Konrad Fischer Gallery, which still exists, Kraftwerk, and the dodgiest group of druggy types I’ve ever seen hanging around in a public space, so I quickly shoot off in the opposite direction, only to find I’m going the wrong way on my map, so I turn around, get my bearings, and off to find Thomas Schütte’s flat. He’s friendly but cool, maybe not sure who this guy from Scotland is. I can sense Schütte thinking, “Does he know anything about my work?” “What does he want?” “Can I get rid of him, although he seems to have a sense of humour”? After some time, the ice was broken and a good sign seemed to be that he got his housekeeper to bring through some coffee and chocolate cake. All seemed well, he starts offering me work to use for the show, giving me catalogues and a bit of his opinion on his next guests to his flat after me, Marion Goodman and entourage; that was real business, I was an interesting distraction to business.
I was to meet up with Schütte again on a couple of occasions in the next few years, for the opening of ‘The House in the Woods’ show in Glasgow and also in London for his big solo show at the Whitechapel, that was great, also getting to go to the after-show meal with Mariele Neudecker but she wouldn’t come into the restaurant, too intimidating, so I’m on my own. But not for long, in I go and up to the far end of the very long table where Schütte is holding court, he generously welcomes me and I get settled in for the mindless banter which seems to happen at these things, Callum Innes was there and his Frith Street folk, all very pleasant, nice bit of payback for my hard work.
I once attempted to get the American artist Robert Gober to take part in an exhibition I was putting together in Scotland. I had never seen his work here before, and I was really keen on showing his sculptures. I also approached some other American artists – Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley and Jessica Stockholder. I received a few fax messages back saying, ‘thanks but we are too busy,’ apart from Stockholder, who agreed in principal but wanted to know much more about the exhibition. The fax messages are now starting to fade with time. Stockholder eventually sent a framed drawing for the exhibition. I was hoping for some sort of sculptural work, like her other artworks, which are made from found materials and objects: fridges, oranges, timber, strip-lights, carpets, mattresses; some of which are painted, and collaged into enormous room-filling installations. But at least she took part in a small way, and was listed in the participating artists. It was the first time Stockholder had exhibited her work in Scotland.
Robert Gober, and the other American artists contacted for that exhibition, are all now significant names in western art history. They have become the modern masters. Mike Kelley, is still showing, even although he died in 2012, and he continues to have major retrospectives and touring projects.
Gober’s art is well-crafted and handmade. Pieces which represent everyday objects, which live around us, in our homes. They look like the things they are trying to be. Gober has made lots of sculptures that look like sinks, urinals, beds, chairs, plug-holes, dresses, wallpaper, bags of donuts, kitty-litter bags, and even a sheet of plywood. He is a sculptor, and an artist, so he makes things, and things that mean things. He uses sculptural techniques to mould and form his pieces, with plaster, wood, paper and fabrics. He could just go out and buy these items, sign them and call them art, like Marcel Duchamp, but he doesn’t. Gober is directly referencing Duchamp’s ‘ready-mades’ in his choice of objects he makes: this object, which looks like a chair or sink is art. The urinals give it away the connection.
While I was at college, we went to Milan in September 1982. It was a special trip to the annual furniture fair. All the current and contemporary products and objects were on display. We were product design students, but not everyone from the class group came on the trip so we were a small group. Our tutor knew some young designers who were working for Sottsass Associates. These designers had lured Ettore Sottsass to see their work – small lamps and radios which they had blatantly set up in the foyer of the V&A in London, where they were living and they knew he was visiting. From this encounter they were asked to come to Milan, to see how it would go. The designers were Gerry Taylor, who was from Glasgow, and Daniel Weil, who was Argentinian. They had both studied at the Royal College of Art in London. It was the early 1980s, products didn’t concern themselves with environmental or user-friendly concerns. It was the time of post-modernism, messing around with form, colour, materials and creating new products for the sake of it. Sottsass had been designing products in Italy, through the 1960s and 1970s, and we had became familiar with a few of his key products, such as the wire-formed fruit bowls and the Olivetti Valentine typewriter – a bright red plastic object which had a cover with a handle, so turning it into a portable office. These products were only available to us through photographs in library books and product catalogues. So being in Milan to see products directly was influential and important. The year before, Sottsass had established the Memphis design group. There are various reasons why “Memphis” became the project name, the best might be, I like to think, was during a relaxed evening that the designer friends were hanging out in their flat, drinking wine and listening to pop music, particularly Bob Dylan. Memphis quickly became a worldwide phenomenon in the design world which then became highly influential throughout the 1980s. It lost favour as tastes changed but continues to be traded as design ‘classics’, being collected and sold for high prices. Sottsass was maybe looking for sharp creative young designers and Taylor and Weil potentially fitted in. In the creation of Memphis as a project within Sottsass Associates – it originally was just a pet project not intended to make money – they continued to design municipal projects for Italian councils, such as bus stop shelters in Turino, for income. Along with the core designers, Memphis was also overseen by Sottsass’ partner Barbara Radice. When Taylor and Weil arrived in Milan, Taylor was incorporated into the Memphis group, Weil wasn’t. Radice apparently wasn’t so sure about his design work. Weil’s ideas and style didn’t really fit with the Memphis stylebook. His radios, fruit bowls and lamps were maybe too clever; too meaningful, maybe too art.
Weil was a thinker. His products had reference points, there was a point to them: why they were the form they were, why they were designed and why they existed. They referenced Marcel Duchamp’s sculptures and artwork. Those readymades, the found objects, appropriated and turned upside-down to become something else. Duchamp’s readymades are products. They were manufactured to accomplish an everyday task. The snow shovel, bicycle wheel, wooden stool, bottle rack, coat hanger and the urinal. These ‘readymades’, are designed and manufactured objects, which have purpose. It is their selection, altered to non-purpose, with an added signature which made them art. Duchamp’s selected ‘readymades’ were objects taken out of context of their purpose. They were identified by Duchamp for their sculptural essence.
Duchamp seemed a supportive, practical and problem-solving type. He selflessly limited his art making through his career, and gladly participated in the production and organising of projects and exhibitions for other artists. Duchamp also realised that he could potentially make money from making small reproductions of his existing artworks, so he developed and produced his multiple work, La Boîte-en-Valise (Box in a Suitcase) (1935-41).
Daniel Weil made products which he could prototype himself before they were batch manufactured in Japan. His ‘Radio-in-a-Bag’ was simply dismantled radio parts sealed into a clear PVC bag which had been screen printed with colour strips, black and white check squares and the word ‘RADIO’. I saw these for sale in London in the early 1980s, on a previous college trip, but didn’t buy one. There is an example of this radio in the V&A London collection. Weil’s products were integrating a conceptual idea, a new way of thinking about a product and its function, but also producing an inspiring design product. They also encouraged people learn a new way to achieve something.
In 1985, Weil had an exhibition of his work at the Architects Association, London. For the exhibition he also made a box, which was the same size as an LP cover but a box set width. Weil’s ‘Light Box’ housed a wood-effect palette-shaped paper pocket containing cards illustrated with coloured drawings of his products, a booklet of essays about his work, a rolled-up textile with images of his drawing products, etched plastic component boards and behind these items was a black and white checked paper insert. This box was a direct reference to Duchamp’s La Boite-en-Valise box, which had contained small replicas of his readymades and artwork.
On the National Galleries of Scotland website, it states that you can contact them about viewing an artwork from their collection, which is not on exhibition in their galleries, but is stored in their warehouse spaces or in the print room archive drawers. I checked their catalogue as I knew that they had an edition of the Duchamp Box. I had seen it on show, I’m sure, years ago. Yes, it was there, listed, stored in the Modern 2 building print room. I was keen to see it. It’s catalogued as a ‘deluxe edition 2/20’, and if so, it is quite significant in the early stages of production of the boxes. It may be the one which was given to Henri Pierre Roché, who was initially described as ‘a general introducer’ [1] by Gertrude Stein, and became a close friend of Duchamp’s for forty years. So, I contacted the galleries and received an email reply saying that the box was too fragile to be seen, and could only be handled by their conservationists. A bit disappointing, as I didn’t need to handle the work per se. I was aware that it would be very fragile, particularly due to the materials that it was made from. I was informed that a film of the box being ‘handled’ and opened up was available on their website. I had watched this already, but I just wanted to see the work in real life, so that I could take in its aura. It is just made of card, paint, cellulose film, plastic, ceramic and adhesive tape. The deluxe editions had been produced by Duchamp (the regular Box edition, which ran into 300 were put together by the artist Joseph Cornell and Xenia Cage), and included one unique piece made by Duchamp. So, I thought this would be interesting to see, and enable me to make connection with the Daniel Weil’s ‘Light Box’ which I own a copy of.
As well as the readymades, Weil also referenced Duchamp’s ‘The Large Glass’ artwork. He made 3-dimensional versions of the ‘Bachelor Apparatus’, which were perspective studies of elements making up the imagery on the glass surface. Weil took these and made lamps of the ‘Sieves’, made from plastic kitchen funnels, arranged in the same form. The British artist Richard Hamilton of course, had been interested in Duchamp’s ideas and work. He became a colleague friend of Duchamp’s and followed him to Los Angeles in the 1960s, where he discovered American art. His painting of a cheap lapel badge saying ‘Slip It to Me’ was indeed an epiphany to him, of the ‘audacity and wit’[2] in American art, and returning to Britain would work on art which would be considered ‘Pop’. In 1966 the Tate Gallery in London organised a Duchamp retrospective, for which Hamilton was commissioned to remake a new physical version of ‘The Large Glass’ for the exhibition. The original work was in the permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and had been famously damaged in transit, so a replacement piece; a readymade piece, seemed a good solution. These versions of versions, gave each new object an informed context, the ideas and concepts became the reason to make the physical works they became. Weil was trying to integrate Duchamp’s ideas into his own work by making from remade versions of Duchamp’s and by consequence Hamilton’s art.
Unfortunately, my visit to the National Galleries of Scotland storage was not to be. I tried again but I didn’t get to compare and contrast the Weil and Duchamp works. The conservation department were too busy to allow me to view the Duchamp work. But at least I know that it is there, that is being taken care of, wrapped and stored, until a time when it is appropriate to bring it out and enable us to view it. Of course, the irony is that there are new cheap versions of this work available online, as ‘readymades’ of the box of Duchamp readymades and other works. Perhaps they could just make a new version, to be seen and handled, without the danger of damage.
Although Duchamp limited his artistic output, other artists and designers since have made their new work from these sources, producing art and design work, mixing up the subjects, allowing art to be design, and design to be art. The subtle slippage of what-is-what challenged those who thought they knew what things are. New ideas, products and art already exist, we just need to be ready to accept the remakes of the readymades.
[1] Tompkins C. Duchamp: A Biography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; 2014.p171.
[2] Hamilton R. Collected Words: 1953-1982. London: Thames and Hudson; 1982. p55.
Iain Irving 