Reflective Practice

Dan Smith's essay for the catalogue [1] of the project Free Trade [2]

The footnotes are missing

Gallery 9 occupies a key position in the newly reopened Manchester Art Gallery. It looks unassuming enough, a room that amounts to little more than an antechamber between the grand staircase leading up from the main entrance and the sumptuously arranged collections of nineteenth-century works that populate the first floor. However, it is inevitably the focus of much of the traffic that passes through the building, a pivotal location on the potential routes that visitors might take. Many - if not most - visitors would pass through Gallery 9, and would probably do so as either the first or last of the galleries that they encountered. Gallery 9 is a point at which the types of experiences made possible within the rest of this museum may be subtly influenced, altered or determined. That museums in general are spaces which frame and condition certain modes of behaviour and experience has already been proposed and much discussed (particularly within the field of Museum Studies). One aspect of this is addressed in an essay by the artist Julian Walker, in which he refers to the fact that some museums will insist that visitors’ bags be left in a cloakroom. This insistence, he suggests, is not for the convenience of the visitor, but rather an assertion of the importance of objects on display over a visitor’s personal belongings:

Reasons for this may range from a reasonable fear of sabotage or theft to fear of the possibility of accidental damage, given a large number of visitors and a desire not to put barriers between the object and the viewer. But the desire to bring the visitor close to the object is realized at the cost of the removing his or her objects from him or her. The implication in this space and this situation is that the museum’s objects are more important than those of the visitor, which is surely the case for the museum.

To engage with an institution in this way is to pass through some kind of space of differentiation between a museum and the outside world. It is within such a space of differentiation, although not one as draconian as the type that Walker describes, that I would like to situate Free Trade [3].

For the duration of their intervention in Manchester, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska have used Gallery 9 as a space in which to stage a historical and interpretative narrative, constructed from a number of different orders of representation. In the centre of the room are objects bequeathed to the Gallery from a collection amassed by George Beatson Blair and his brothers, partners in a Manchester based company that dealt in the import and export of cotton. Like many other wealthy merchants in the nineteenth century, he used some his profits to accumulate goods with an apparent cultural value, such as fine furniture, old and oriental ceramics, and paintings. Most of these objects appear fairly ordinary and unremarkable in a museum context: pieces of chinoiserie, the hollow case of a grandfather clock, a wooden rattle, an admission card to the Manchester Exhibition of 1857. On one wall, hung salon-style, are the paintings from the Bequest, arranged in a fashion that democratically fails to make any great distinction between the work of artists who might be recognised today and the majority of painters on show who are unknown. The original Bequest consisted of an estimated 30,000 items, which filled all the spaces of the house in which George and his brothers lived. After his death in 1941, 4894 items were selected from the Bequest –and recorded in an inventory- to be stored for safekeeping during the Second World War, the remainder were sold at public auction. After the War, from this initial selection 458 objects were eventually chosen to be included in the Gallery’s collection. The original inventory has been reproduced, enlarged and fixed to the walls of Gallery 9 as wallpaper, the only surviving record of the size and diversity of the collection.

This installation has other elements: The space is filled by the sound of speeches, or recreations of speeches, given at the reopening of the Manchester’s Royal Exchange in 1921. The Exchange had long been the hub of the city’s commerce, its enlargement and reopening had been necessitated by the vast increase in the scale global markets. Also on display is a painting from 1877 of the Exchange as it had been, which includes a portrait of George Beatson Blair amongst the mercantile crowd. Under the sound of the speeches and amidst the items piled in the middle of the room are two shiny new TV sets. One shows archive footage of the movement of goods into Manchester through the Ship Canal, while on the other are examples of the variety of products manufactured in the city for export. The whole of the central arrangement of objects is cordoned off to visitors by a length of tape bearing the words “Beatson Blair Bequest”. Each item from the collection is accompanied by a price tag – branded by a Free Trade logo - showing the monetary valuation of each object made in 1947, substituting the more conventional object label with information that is usual not included in museum displays.

Since 1995, Neil and Marysia have worked together on a series of investigative projects, which have been consistent in their relentlessly propositional character. The history of their collaborative practice can be described as a series of responses to specific situations, each of which address a growing set of persistent concerns, while exploring, inscribing and reiterating a set of methodological possibilities. Each of these works has been different, avoiding the repetition of an exact formula or style, yet at the same time, they are variations that seem nevertheless consistent as constitutive of a body of work. It is in the particular differences between their activities and more conventional, dominant models of contemporary art practice that a reflective strategy, or rather an array of strategies, can be identified. Their book The Value of Things [4] (2000) took as its central premise the close proximity of the department store and the museum as sites that organize and facilitate an encounter with objects. It was a form of research project, addressing both the British Museum and Selfridges, a presentation of their fieldwork within a broader theoretical and historical context. This was a work in which Neil and Marysia confirmed their commitment to the premise that an interpretative and analytical project can be as relevant as showing gallery-based work. It also demonstrated the successful use of both image, text and the very object of the book as part of a critical and engaging art practice.

For their project Capital [5] (2001) at Tate Modern in London, Neil and Marysia staged an act of gift giving. In an area set aside for visitors to sit, read a selection of books laid out on tables and admire the view across the Thames, gallery staff would select a recipient for a beautifully packaged gift, presenting it with the words “This is for you”. This act would be repeated several times a day, not only at Tate Modern, but also across the river at the Bank of England Museum. The gift was a print that showed a spoon, part of a silver cutlery service owned by the Bank of England. The gift of the print served as an anchoring device for the other elements of the project, which took the form of a seminar series and a book. The act also performed a gesture of reciprocity. A public institution –tate- that relies on money drawn from taxation gave something back to its visitors, and the need for a subsequent act of return from the recipient. In staging this central transaction within the two co-operating institutions, Capital suggested the complexity of the relationships that constitute a financial economy based upon debt, and an artworld beholden to gifting. Most substantially realised through its most lasting form, that of an accompanying book, Capital articulated a potential comparison and structural difference between these two systems. Both institutions, underwrite the integrity of two parallel and immensely complicated economies, guaranteeing value, circulating trust and ensuring stability.

Although all of their collaborative work is specific to a particular contexts, a set of enquiries run through their projects. These persistent concerns reiterate a set of methodological possibilities, which I will attempt to categorise as three loosely defined themes. The first of these relates to the idea of an engaged reflexivity relating to the broader culture in which art might be produced. As Joseph Kosuth suggests, it might be valuable for artists to acquire the tools of an anthropologist. Artists might learn from the society to which they are attempting to contribute, acting as translators as well as re-producers of culture. Secondly, collaboration can be identified as a key element. Obviously, this refers to the authorial process as a dialogue between Neil and Marysia, but perhaps as significant are the relationships established between the pair and those that they work with on a project. The artists acknowledge that their work benefits from the involvement of others, and that there is always much to learn from processes of negotiation. Curators, designers and editors have all been engaged as active participants at various points in Neil and Marysia’s work, and Free Trade [6] is no exception in this regard.

The third recurring theme is one that is generally not stated and is instead enacted by the work itself. Neil and Marysia have shown a kind of stubborn resistance to the expectation that artists generally make things that can be inserted into galleries and museums. There is no doubt that they often make things in one way or another, but decisions regarding what they do make are regarded with reflexive attention. For example, they have had wallpaper and other various elements manufactured to hold together the components of Free Trade, but these generally operate as framing devices for the objects, structures and histories articulated within the overall project. Their attentive relationship to the production of things within their work echoes a statement by conceptual artist Douglas Huebler: “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting: I do not wish to add any more.” In general, it seems as if the idea that an artist’s studio should be held up as the site of production for objects that will be displayed and circulated in galleries is an assumption that is often taken for granted. This normative model reinforces self-imposed limits on how art practice might be imagined and what its social contexts might be. Deviation from this normative model might allow some form of critique of these limits, and could suggest new forms of relationship between artists and the culture in which they work.

In addition to the installation in Gallery 9, Free Trade is constituted by some key elements which it would be a mistake to regard as periphery additions. Neil and Marysia have organised a series of events that are key components to this project. A series of historical lectures, previously delivered at the Gallery by William Morris and John Ruskin, on relationships between art and commerce will be recreated. And in addition, contemporary speakers were invited to talk on the same themes. There were also a series of guided walks led by a local architectural historian Steve Little, which linked the exhibition to the architectural legacy of the nineteenth century in Manchester. The tours thread together the Free Trade Hall, the various commodity Exchanges, glorious banks, canals, shops and warehouses; architectural forms that all embody a period of radical transformation in Manchester. These tours and lectures link the Gallery to the external world, and historical context in which it is situated, and it is in these points of connection that Free Trade operates.

Within the project, the economic development of Manchester is identified as a precursor for the subsequent development of global capitalism. Manchester’s economic success was founded upon the presence of cloth weaving as long ago as the sixteenth century. In 1808, Manchester’s Cotton Exchange opened, issuing shares and affirming the position of the city as the centre of the Lancashire cotton industry, connected via a complex circulatory system of canals to other mill and factory towns. Not only did these provide transport for goods to and from the rest of Lancashire, but also facilitated international trade through connections between sea-going vessels and canal boats. The canals also allowed food into the expanding city from the countryside, coal flowed thorough them to fuel insatiable factories and they allowed people to circulate as freely as the commodities. Building materials were also transported, and were required to build that warehouses that were needed to store and organise the goods mobilised by the canals. The increasing commercial importance of Manchester saw a growth in banking throughout the nineteenth century, the architectural legacy of which is visible in the city, and in 1874 The Cotton Exchange, now granted the title ‘Royal’ was moved to a large new building.

This history, visible in the architectural forms of contemporary Manchester, is not just a background for Free Trade, but is part of the very terrain that it is attempting to open up as a space of enquiry. Through the framing and re–contextualisation of the Beatson Blair Bequest, the project implies that the Gallery’s collections are inseparable from the history of nineteenth-century Manchester. Simultaneously, by citing Manchester as a kind of originary form, Free Trade [7] suggests that this is not just a provincial history, but actually a precursor for global structures of trade and commerce in the form of unregulated capital. In other words, the world has taken on a resemblance to Manchester in its era of radical development.

Free Trade [8] can ultimately be seen as a loose description of a set of relationships between the inside and the outside of a museum. If it is necessary to view museums as sites of differentiation between interior and exterior, it is also necessary to view the constructed and often artificial nature of such a distinction. The installation in Gallery 9 is configured in just such a way so as to point to the outside of the building. The types of object piled up in the middle of the room appear, on the whole, less than remarkable. This is in contrast to the other objects on display in the rest of the Gallery, each of which is presented as an interesting and unique, object, worthy of our attention. The pieces in the Free Trade installation hardly seem worthy of Antiques Roadshow. These objects were collected by an individual and kept within a domestic interior during his lifetime, filling the spaces of his home to the extent that many things had to be stored in pigsties. After being brought out of storage, they have only received a quick clean, as opposed to the standards normally applied to museum objects. Of course, these objects must be kept at some kind of distance from visitors, but the few display cases used here look as if they too were from the original Bequest, domestic furniture that has seen better days rather than what might be expected from a ‘museum grade’ vitrine. The whole arrangement is cordoned off against the hands of visitors, but by a rather ineffective looking piece of plastic tape, as if the area were a crime scene or had been closed due to a toxic spillage. The taped-off area makes the enclosed objects feel as though they are in transition, a temporary and improvisatory display that is in sharp contrast to the imposing certainty exhibited in the rest of the museum. There is some play here with the conventions of what types of objects might be on display, the ways they should be exhibited and how they might be viewed.

The installation is also branded in an oddly conspicuous way. The tape is inscribed with the name of the Bequest. A huge Free Trade logo dominates one of the walls. Each of the price labels bears a Free Trade inscription. Identity appears ubiquitous. Into this can be read not only the predominance of brand awareness within the realms of capital, but more importantly it seems to refer to the increasing needs for museums to assume confident, recognisable brand identities and to operate in terms of marketing. Manchester Art Gallery occupies a key position in the status of the city of Manchester itself as a marketable and prestigious centre for arts and culture. The opportunity to build the new Gallery extension was fasilitated through a competition run with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The scheme was the recipient of the largest award from the Heritage Lottery Fund to be granted outside of London. It has doubled the display area, provided space for a café, and also for a shop. It is in the shop that it is possible to recognise the most quotidian forms of the museum as a marketable form, with Manchester Art Gallery-branded objects mingling with other goods in the heart of the building and making their way out into the world. The intervention of Neil and Marysia in this institution has been to establish a series of connections between that Gallery and an ongoing translation of contemporary culture. While framing itself within the spaces of distinction between the interior and exterior of Manchester Art Gallery, Free Trade complicates such a distinction, dissolving the sense that a clear boundary can exist between what is held within and what is artificially differentiated as the rest of the world.

----
Return to Texts [9], the Free Tradecatalogue [10], or miscellaneous texts [11]