exchange

Free Trade

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:48:38 +0000

Sub-Title

commissioned by Catherine Dickinson

End Date

23 Feb 2003

Start Date

25 May 2002

Location

Manchester Art Gallery: Manchester

Body

Background

The idea of Free trade is fundamental to the city of Manchester. In 1812 the anti-corn law league set out to break the restrictive practices of the aristocratic landowners, and their ability to lobby Parliament to impose import duty on grain. The middle class merchants and manufacturers who advocated Free trade understood that cheap food would mean cheap labour and increased profits. The subsequent triumph of Free trade enabled Manchester to become the largest import/export and distribution centre in England, and subsequently the British Empire. Throughout the mid 19th century the expansion of trade enabled the city to evolve into the second largest centre for commercial banking and joint stock trading; transforming itself from a manufacturer into the centre of a global market-place

Of course, the explosion of trade and extrusion of wealth began to find expression in a different kind of ‘cultural’ capital.

A stunning example of the complex web of financial and cultural exchange in Manchester, and a perfect vehicle by which to trace their movements is the Beatson Blair Bequest. George Beatson Blair was one of three brothers -James, Alexander, and George- who were all partners in a cotton import/export and shipping company. And like other newly wealthy middle class merchants, James and George turned their financial profits into cultural goods.

On George’s death, the executors of the estate estimated the collection to consist of around 30,000 artefacts, of which 5,000 were paintings. The collection filled the five entertaining rooms, twenty bedrooms, offices for staff, bathrooms, attics, halls, landings, staircases, workshops and even the pig-sty’s of the brothers house in Whalley Range. Each room was overflowing. An inventory of 4894 objects exists in the gallery archive, of which around 458 objects were eventually accessioned by the Manchester Gallery.

Free trade is not only a historical event, it is the origin of the forces of globalisation.

Through the idea of free trade it's possible to trace how national interests have been superseded by corporate priorities, and cultural goods have moved from being a by-product of economic wealth, to its source. In Manchester for instance manufacturing has been replaced by music and television industries, sport has become business, and museum and gallery visits -linked to tourism – have become beacons of economic regeneration.

Installation

After a year of research, we identified in the Beatson Blair Bequest a beautiful example of Manchester’s particular social, economic and cultural history, as well as a device with which to explore the history and conventions of the Manchester Art Gallery itself.

For the first time ever, the remains of the Beatson Blair Bequest –all the paintings, fine furniture, ceramics, silver, hardstones and bric-a-brac - have been brought together into one room. The extraordinary installation piled into the centre of the gallery challenges the conventions of museum exhibition. These precious objects are not sorted into type, period or manufacturer; the rhetoric of the museum classification, nor are they isolated in vitrines for distant aesthetic connoisseurship. Displayed as if in transit, the objects are momentarily arrested, on route elsewhere - from store to exhibition? The installation hints at the chaotic interior of Blair's house, and the huge quantity of all manner of goods that moved continually through Manchester.

Before objects become part of Gallery or Museum collections they participate in circuits of exchange. In this instance bought by the Blair's at auction and from dealers in Manchester; and in an inversion of conventional gallery labeling, each object from the Bequest carries the one piece of information that visitors are most curious about, its 1941 price. These artworks, as well as being objects of trade, were also purchased from the profit of trade.

We have turned the most complete inventory of the Bequest -4894 objects – into Gallery wallpaper. Standing Inside this ghost of the collection, you can grasp the extent of the original bequest, and notice how it was edited to fit the museum's image of itself; rather than represent the taste of the collector. See what was sold at auction, and wonder why that painting was disposed of, and this pewter tankard accessioned.

Films

Two film-loops run continuously in the exhibition, edited from amateur film found at the North West Film Archive at the Metropolitan University. One film records goods and materials pouring into Manchester via the Ship Canal for distribution via the various produce-exchanges and markets. While another pans the endless stream of products manufactured in the city for subsequent export.

Walks

A series of gentle walks took place –lead by local historian Steve Little- around and through the Free Trade exhibition, the Gallery and then out into the city. The legacy of Free trade still dominates the architecture of Manchester; visit the Free Trade Hall (1840)-now a luxurious hotel The Royal, Coal, Corn and Produce Exchanges - all shopping malls, the bridgewater canal, various magnificent wholesale warehouses -currently speculative loft-living appartments and a suite of beautiful 19th century Banks –now extravagant bars.

Lectures

Art Wealth and Riches
Sunday 10 November

A lecture by writer and critic William Morris, was first delivered at a joint conversazione of Manchester Societies at the Royal Institution, Manchester 6th March 1883.' It will be recreated by actor Steve Whitehouse.

In this brilliant and provocative lecture, writer, craftsman and socialist William Morris challenges the merchants and manufacturers of Manchester. With uncanny prescience, Morris describes our current confusion; between art and fashion, art and celebrity, and art and shopping.

Art and globalisation
Sunday 24 November

Writer and critic Julian Stallabrass will upgrade the themes of the William Morris lecture. As Free Trade is subsumed by vast exchanges of corporate capital, Julian explores the success and failure of contemporary art, amidst the commodified cultures of globalization.

A Joy Forever
Sunday 26 January

A lecture by writer and critic John Ruskin, to coincide with the Art
Treasures Exhibition was first delivered at the Manchester Athenaeum, July 10th 1857. Recreated by art historian and former actor Paul O'Keefe.

John Ruskin's extraordinary lecture attempts to build a political economy for art. He suggests that all economies could easily be divided into three components.
1. applying your labour rationally

2. preserving its produce carefuly

3. distributing its produce seasonably.

With devastating effects, this ideal economy is then laid over the production (artist), storage and distribution (museum/gallery) of the art of his time; a model that seems unchanged and relevant today.

Free Trade
Sunday 9 February 2003

Artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, who devised Free Trade, talk about the project in relation to other recent work

catalogue Free Trade

Edited by the artists, with previously unpublished archive material alongside photographs of the gallery installation; features rare lectures previously delivered in Manchester by John Ruskin (1857) and William Morris (1883) and commissioned essays by historian Julian Stallabrass, artist and writer Dan Smith and investment manager Toby Nangle.

Neil's research for the lecture series was assisted by a Research Grant from Chelsea College of Art and Design.

For more information visit the Manchester Art Gallery. Free Trade was sponsored by Axa Art Insurance

Free Trade

admin — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:19:20 +0000

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

October 2003

Location

Publisher

Manchester Art Gallery: Manchester

Designer

Anne Odling-Smee

Body

The catalogue that accompanies the Free Trade project includes historical research; drawings, models and photographs of the gallery installation; previously unpublished archive material, and specially commissioned essays

The idea of Free trade is fundamental to the city of Manchester.

In 1812 the anti-corn law league set out to break the restrictive practices of the aristocratic landowners, and their ability to lobby Parliament to impose import duty on grain. The middle class merchants and manufacturers who advocated Free trade understood that cheap food would mean cheap labour and increased profits. The subsequent triumph of Free trade enabled Manchester to become the largest import/export and distribution centre in England, and subsequently the British Empire. Throughout the mid 19th century the expansion of trade enabled the city to evolve into the second largest centre for commercial banking and joint stock trading; transforming itself from a manufacturer into the centre of a global market-place. Of course, the explosion of trade and extrusion of wealth began to find expression in a different kind of ‘cultural’ capital.

Free trade is not only a historical event, it is the origin of the forces of globalisation

Directors Foreword, Virginia Tandy

Free Trade/free art Art Historian Julian Stallabrass

An essay that suggests that the autonomy and supplementary 'freedom' (see Ruskin below, and Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory) of art, masks the violence implicit in Free Trade.

Reflective Practice Artist and writer Dan Smith

With the memorable phrase [.....] 'in other words, the world has taken on the resemblance of Manchester in its era of radical development'. Dan Smith's essay locates the Free Trade project within a wider context of our practice, current 'museum' interventions by artists, and the historical development of Manchester.

Global Markets investment manager Toby Nangle

The scale and complexity of deregulated -read free- financial debt markets, overshadows the entire production and circulation of goods, of the planet. Financial debt, drives free trade and we are all caught within its vortex.

Also features rare lectures previously delivered in Manchester

John Ruskin A Joy Forever; And its Price in the Market.

10th & 13th July 1857.

Ruskin’s extraordinary lecture attempts to build a political economy for art. He suggests that all economies require the wise management of labour, and could easily be divided into three components.

1. applying your labour rationally
2. preserving its produce carefuly
3. distributing its produce seasonably.

With devastating effects, this ideal economy is then laid over the production, storage and distribution of the art of his time; a model that seems unchanged and still relevant today.

And William Morris Art Wealth and Riches

read on 6th March 1883 at a Gathering of the Royal Manchester Institute.

In this brilliant and provocative lecture, writer, craftsman and socialist William Morris challenges the merchants and manufacturers of Manchester. He suggests that Free Trade, and the industrial reproduction of ugly and uneccesary things denies equality, freedom, and happiness for all. Consequently, contemporary art - produced under theses conditions - is nothing but the pretence of art. With uncanny prescience, in this challenging and provocative lecture Morris describes our current confusion; between art and fashion, art and entertainment or art and celebrity.

Description

ISBN/ASIN

0-901673-61-9

ArtWords Link

Free Trade Spread

admin — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:17:53 +0000

Installation
Free Trade, Manchester 2003

Free Trade Trafford park

admin — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:17:23 +0000

Great Exhibition
Trafford Park, Manchester 2002

Free Trade Model

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Installation planning
Free Trade, Manchester 2003

Free Trade Films

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Film Stills
Free Trade, Manchester 2003

Free Trade Cover

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cover
Free Trade, Manchester 2003

Art Wealth and Riches

admin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:40:15 +0000

Art, Wealth and Riches

By William Morris

A lecture by writer and critic William Morris, was first delivered at a joint conversazione of Manchester Societies at the Royal Institution, Manchester 6th March 1883.This version was redelivered by actor Steve Whitehouse, on the 10th November 2003 as part of Free Trade and is reprinted in the catalogue.

Art, Wealth, and Riches are the words I have written at the head of this paper. Some of you may think that the two latter words, wealth and riches, are tautologous; but I cannot admit it. In truth these are no real synonyms in any language, I mean unless in the case of words borrowed from another tongue; and in the early days of our own language no one would have thought of using the word rich as a synonym for wealthy. He would have understood a wealthy man to mean one who had plentiful livelihood, and a rich man one who had great dominion over his fellow-men. Alexander the Rich, Canute the Rich, Alfred the Rich; these are familiar words enough in the early literature of the North; the adjective would scarcely be used except of a great king or chief, a man pre-eminent above other kings and chiefs. Now, without being a stickler for etymological accuracy, I must say that I think there are cases where modern languages have lost power by confusing two words into one meaning, and that this is one of them. I shall ask your leave therefore to use the words wealth and riches somewhat in the way in which our forefathers did, and to understand wealth as signifying the means of living a decent life, and riches the means for exercising dominion over other people. Thus understood the words are widely different to my mind; yet, indeed, if you say that the difference is but one of degree I must needs admit it; just so it is between the shepherdâ€™s dog and the wolf. Their respective views on the subject of mutton differ only in degree.

A Shadow of Marx

admin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:50:59 +0000

A Shadow of Marx is a chapter in a Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945 edited by Prof. Amelia Jones. The publication has an innovative structure, it mixes thematic sections with historical overviews, and is intended as a student 'primer'. The following text is a draft, without illustrations and excludes footnotes, you can buy the publication from Blackwell or Amazon.

A Shadow of Marx

Its June 16th 2001, and Im standing behind a rope barrier with a crowd of people in a sloping field, on the edge of a village in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, England. On the other side of the rope are hundreds of people practicing how to perform a running battle. They shout at each other; one side charges and the other retreats, and then vice versa. Some are dressed as police officers. I can see riot gear, shields, snarling dogs and even horses, the others, the civilians, are all men dressed in slightly out of date clothing, from around the 1980s. A voice comes over a loudspeaker system and a number of small two-person film crews with digital cameras mingle with the participants.

And then it starts shouting, charges, chanting, the throwing of surrogate stones and other objects, skirmishes; dogs are used and people are apparently arrested. The confrontation gets very violent and everyone surges into the far bottom corner of the field, and then the action stops. The participants move to another location obscured from my view, although I can see thick black smoke and smell burning rubber. Eventually a loudspeaker crackles into life and we are asked to move down onto a nearby road, where a terrifying battle is raging. Cars are overturned and on fire; there is blood. Mounted police gallop down the road followed by a hail of thrown rocks and debris, confrontations flare up; beautifully choreographed violence leaves bloodied and injured men scattered along the road. A claxon sounds and the violence subsides. People stop skirmishing, help each other up, start smiling and hugging and begin clearing things away.

This is all taking place at the spot where, twenty years ago, 4000 striking miners from across the UK tried to stop coal moving into a coke works and were confronted by a force of 3000 police brought by the government to ensure the coal was delivered. The pitched battle that ensued was one of the most bitter of an already desperate struggle between the remnants of unionized labour and a government determined to introduce deregulated markets as a disciplinary force. For many, this event was a defining moment for contemporary Britain.

The 2001 re-staging of the event, is one of the most powerful artworks made in England for as long as I can remember Jeremy Dellers The English Civil War Part II, colloquially known as the Battle of Orgreave. This amazing event was conceived by Deller and organized through Artangel, an independent commissioning agency that works with artists to realize site-specific projects.

For the previous eighteen months Deller had been researching in and around Orgreave, talking with residents, ex-miners, local historians and the police. For The English Civil War, Deller meticulously reconstructed the battle, choreographing 800 people (including 300 ex-miners and police officers, some of whom had taken part in the original confrontation) in collaboration with amateur re-enactment groups, whose members are known for dressing-up as soldiers and replaying battles belonging to deep historical time. On this occasion the historical battle was within living memory. The audience consisted of local people and a smattering of art-world types who had been persuaded to leave London for the day.

The event was, and is, difficult to describe because it occupied many different cultural categories at once: it was a work of art, a re-enacted battle, an extraordinary celebration, a struggle to represent history and part film-set. The film director Mike Figgis had been commissioned by Channel Four television to make a film of the strike using the reconstruction as source material, and this partly paid for the artwork. Overall, it was very difficult to pinpoint the experience in relation to a particular object or site as a work of art, or even to acknowledge where the various components of the art project began or ended. But over time, it became clear that Jeremy Deller had produced an extraordinary artwork, the effects of which are still reverberating.

Marxism and Ideology

We are, all of us, enacting a text written elsewhere. And this text, whether we like it or not and whether we can name it or not, is called ideology. Jeremy Dellers The English Civil War is a rich, profound and provocative contemporary artwork that uses the legacy of a Marxist cultural critique to bring one strand of this ideological text explosively into the present. The battle memorialized a profound historical moment, through denying us the luxury of forgetting its effects, and simultaneously challenged contemporary art to engage with important issues of social representation. At the same time, it avoided reducing those formative events and complex social processes to illustration, entertainment or empty spectacle.

Deller deployed one of the most powerful tools in contemporary art, which is the use of research or fieldwork in the making of the work within a specific location. Because the work of a contemporary work of art increasingly takes place through distributive, communicative or social networks, research is beginning to replace site specificity as a means of engagement between an artist and a location. And it is now understood that the site, like the artwork itself, doesn't simply pre-exist its display and interpretation; both the work and its site are made simultaneously through the act of engagement.

In the case of The English Civil War, it is clear that an artwork as complex as this cannot be bound by the physical exhibition space of a gallery or museum. Its site which is one among many is the social imagination. The English Civil War exists differently for each of its different participants and audience members: from those participants who fought in the initial confrontation and collaborated with the re-staging to those who have read the countless accounts of it in magazines, websites, and journals the world over. And now, even those of you reading this text.

As huge areas of social life are spiraling into abstraction largely as a result of the complexity of our globally networked economies, the most basic functions of our daily life, such as the simplest purchase of a pair of shoes, involve lines of debt and credit, chains of labour relationships and complex supply routes of materials, images and information which circle the globe. If art has traditionally been able to make visible and thus give form to the most subtle yet powerful of beliefs, it is not surprising that the most ambitious contemporary art would seek to engage with these forces.

In our networked economies the exchange of accumulated value as capital has becomes slippery and complex. It is no longer clear where the creation of value, the foundation of political economy, fits into our accelerated exchange of signs, services and information. The theory of value based on the accumulated profit extracted from labour, which emerged in industrial-age economic models and is principally identified with the work of Karl Marx, has little or no purchase on the possibilities introduced by immaterial labour. The kinds of ephemeral products manufactured by contemporary cultural, entertainment and creative industries like museums and galleries or in public relations departments and advertising companies are difficult to represent. But what is clear, is that art is no longer a luxury by-product of financial capital that can transcend political and economic structures; it must be seen as central to these new economies.

Arts dissolution into the space of the commodity was critically deployed by a group of American artists during the 1980s. Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine and Heim Steinbach, for example, utilizing the material vocabulary and syntax of goods, to intensify the lack of arts representational authority.

At the same time, other artists have critiqued the commodification of art, opening out its structures of reproduction. Daniel Buren traces the intersection between the work of art and everyday aesthetic exchanges; Hans Haacke investigates the corporate, state and private investments inherent in the circulation of art through cultural institutions; and Michael Asher explores the misrecognised obligations -such as the commercial imperative behind arts exhibition and display- that produce the work of the work of art. Collectively, their practice of interrogating the institutions of art since the 1970s has laid the ground for the 1980s-1990s work of Group Material, Fred Wilson and Andrea Fraser, defined by its strategic institutional critique.

Jeremy Deller is one of a range of contemporary artists -including Mathieu Laurette, Thomas Hirschhorn, and the members of collaborative groups such as Inventory, The Free Copenhagen University or Superflex - who are building on this legacy of institutional critique. Artists such as Deller have turned their attention away from the institutions of art themselves to concentrate on the network of economic, political and social structures of which art is increasingly an integral part. Rather than merely illustrating these structures through artworks and exhibitions, they attempt to vividly re-animate the world as experience through critical reception. The encounter with art, the artwork or the event is no longer a passive encounter through the medium of display, but is articulated as a place of engagement and production. Artworks are no longer viewed as points of origin, imagined to be founded on the artists creativity, or of termination, housed in museums and galleries or their stores, but as nodes in networks of exchange. Such artworks and practices are only possible because of a wide and deep-rooted engagement with cultural criticism, the legacy of which owes an enormous debt to a Marxist-inspired engagement with culture.

Classic Marxism

Marxism is the political practice and/or social theory based on the works of Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary. Marx borrowed a core philosophical model from Friedrich Hegel, a political economy derived from Adam Smith, and aspects of nineteenth-century French socialism to develop a critique of European society. This critique achieved its most systematic expression in his major unfinished three-volume work, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.

Marx used Hegels model of historical progress, in which ideology and knowledge gradually develop towards their intended conclusion, but inverted its cause and effect, proposing that material circumstances shape ideas, instead ofas in Hegels modelthe other way around. Marx s material theory of history, otherwise known as historical materialism, is beautifully summarized in his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where he notes, he mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Marx could see that the means of controlling the material reproduction of life had divided society into two broad social classes:

A Joy Forever II

admin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:01:04 +0000

A Joy Forever (and its place in the Market)

By John Ruskin

Lecture II of A Joy Forever
Extracted from a lecture first delivered at the Manchester Athenaeum, to coincide with the Art Treasures Exhibition, July 10th 1857. This version was recreated by art historian and former actor Paul O'Keefe, on the 26th November 2003 as part of Free Trade and is reprinted in the catalogue.

exchange

Free Trade

Sub-Title

End Date

Start Date

Location

Body

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Free Trade

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

Location

Publisher

Designer

Body

Description

ISBN/ASIN

ArtWords Link

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Free Trade Spread

Free Trade Trafford park

Free Trade Model

Free Trade Films

Free Trade Cover

Art Wealth and Riches

Art, Wealth and Riches

A Shadow of Marx

A Shadow of Marx

Marxism and Ideology

Classic Marxism

A Joy Forever II

A Joy Forever (and its place in the Market)

The Accumulation and Distribution of Art