BEARSPACE

 

 
the Assistant #1
 
14 May - 29 May 2010
 
Private View: 14 May 2010 - 6.30-8.30pm
 
View the Assistant project blog for updates, images, videos, discussion and Assistant Stories, please visit:
http://theassistant2010.blogspot.com
 
Assistant Artist: Kate Pickering

Director Artist: Maria Fusco 

 
 
The Rules - To 'assistant' Kate Pickering from 'director' Maria Fusco
 
1. Acquire a copy of David Foster Wallace's book of short stories 'Oblivion'.
2. Select three stories and read them over three consecutive days, beginning on a Monday (note they vary quite radically in length).
3. Do nothing related to this project for four days.
4. On the next Monday, select just one of the stories that you feel has the most potential as a tool for investigation.
5. Make one piece of work, each day, for each page of the story you have selected. You are free to choose the form and content of this.
6. Re-order the works you have made into a sequence which 'works with' the original story in a way that you consider to address temporal space.
7. Exhibit it.
  

BEARSPACE, in association with Peer Sessions, is pleased to present an exhibition project entitled The Assistant which will open May14th 2010. Each exhibition will pair up an emerging artist with a more established practitioner, the two of whom will then enter into a dialogue in order to produce an exhibition.

The established artist, as 'director', will send the emerging artist, or 'assistant', a list of rules one month prior to the exhibition opening. These will  potentially lay out criteria around the creation of the work or how it is to be installed. The emerging artist, as assistant, is presented with the possibility of following these instructions to the letter or subverting and undermining them, producing an individual response.

The Assistant project aims to explore the practices of both artists through this process of exchange and discussion.  The project seeks to question ideas around the construction of an exhibition, the underlying processes and relations that exist beyond the specifically defined limits of its opening times.  Through the exchange of rules, ideas and guidelines, the exhibition will interrogate the categories of  'emerging' and 'established' artist and through this interaction, potentially deconstruct such polarities.  A blog containing communication between the artists, progress updates and public contributions will open a wider discourse around the exhibition, potentially exposing the relations behind the work itself and documenting 'the Assistant' from conception to realisation.

The resulting exhibitions will last for two weeks each, with the blog, a discussion event and a Peer Sessions video screening accompanying the shows.

Peer sessions is a not for profit group set up by recent Goldsmiths fine art masters graduates to provide support and mentoring to those embarking on their careers in the arts through peer critique, discussion and gallery visits.