Art has become increasingly relational. Artists use social exchanges as material for artistic investigation. The relational analysis of human interaction has significance in evaluating the value of community and the integrity of human relationships. In a world saturated with technological independence and cyber communication the physical interactions of people within an actual space is undervalued and increasingly rarified. This brings into questions of authenticity and authorship in regards to the Fine Art.
I have dealt with issues of authenticity and community in my own work by enlisting community sponsorship to realize my exhibition, ‘To Authenticate’. Members of my authentic community, i.e. friends, colleagues, family, lecturers, were all invited to Sponsor-A-Plinth. Sponsors financial support was then used to produce eleven plinths on which to present final original drawings of black and white photographs. Each sponsor received an authenticity certificate; their name engraved on a plaque and placed on a plinth; and the invitation to an exclusive one-night preview of ‘To Authenticate’ at NKB Gallery, Mt Eden. The purpose of involving my ‘authentic community’ was in direct retaliation to an article by Elizabeth Currid, entitled “The Economics of a Good Party: Social Mechanisms and the Legitimization of Art/Culture”. The function of the overall work was didactic, utilizing authentic imagery to create time and space for the viewer to enlist their own subjective perception in order to assess truth, quality, and the ‘value’ of an original artifact.
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It is interesting to hear how your own work used the ideas of Social exchange in the creation of your recent artwork. When people donated money to the exhibition of drawing did it add more of an aura around the objects? or was the value placed more on the plaque that named the sponsor?
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