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Free Trade Royal Exchange

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Royal Exchange painting
Free Trade 2003

Free Trade detail ceramic

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Free Trade 2003

Vol 3: Reading Things

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Sub-Title

Date of Publication

November 1993

Location

Publisher

Chance Books: London

Designer

Stephen Coates

Body

From the introduction to Reading Things

The substance of our material culture, refracted through the advertising media, is an increasingly dominant site for the struggle to represent an individual's most powerful desires, aspirations and fears. In countries with a sophisticated culture of consumption, we are constantly encouraged to associate and identify, with a bewildering range of things.

From Tampax to Trade sanctions, these consumer choices - if media theory is to be believed - may embody the last remaining coherent space of personal and cultural representation.

Research into the nature of the object has traditionally concentrated on the production and distribution of things by industry and retail. This analysis has taken the form of market research, target sampling, advertising and statistics. Such a particular representation tries to identify gaps for the profitable manufacture of commodities, to effectively locate, isolate and eventually stimulate demand.

Clearly this is a warped perspective, it may account for what, or how many things are in circulation, but it does not begin to offer any understanding of how they are actually used.

The theme of Reading Things lies in attending to things as they fall from the commodity loop into their rich and varied lives. How exactly are objects patterned with meaning and value? How for instance do they begin to trap historically transient -Love beads, Ben Sherman's or safety pins ?

Most of our material world, like the iceberg, lies beneath the threshold of our comprehension. Things flow past and rest silently as a sediment shaping our consciousness. If our experience of time is dovetailed into the representation of the present, the object, like the pop song, can snare the fleeting moment as it falls away from memory.

How people actually utilise things is extremely resistant to representation. Through the diverse contributions presented in Reading Things, the intention is to establish and then play back some of the procedures of use, against tactics for art. Reading Things recognises that it is often only the shift in context, the suspension of utility, that separates the two.

Text and artists projects from Richard Wentworth, David Joselit, Caroline Russel, Lolly Batty, Daniel Miller, Roger Estop, John Cussans, David Dibosa, Rachel Evans, and John Miller.

You can read the essay that intoduces the theme of the publication Reading Things: The Alibi of Use.

Description

176 pages, 60 B & W images

ISBN/ASIN

0 9513932 3 5

ArtWords Link

Free Trade Spread

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Installation
Free Trade, Manchester 2003

Free Trade Trafford park

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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

Reflective Practice

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Reflective Practice

Dan Smith's essay for the catalogue of the project Free Trade

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 visitorsâ€™ 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 visitorâ€™s personal belongings:

Art Wealth and Riches

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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.

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Free Trade Royal Exchange

Free Trade detail ceramic

Vol 3: Reading Things

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

Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice

Art Wealth and Riches

Art, Wealth and Riches