The Alternate Art Fair was a live drawing installation I created at the @thearmoryshow in 2016 as one of the special projects curated by Contemporary And.
It featured a collection of real and imagined experiences distilled through the lens of a stellar cast of fictitious artists and galleries. The visual/written language common to art magazines, catalogues, classified ads, and spam mail in combination with personal experiences, and the daily happenings during the show served as source material for the creation of the Alternate Art Fair. It was a fair within a fair where the artist took on the role of fair director and curator and gave access to anyone who wanted to participate in shaping it. The content was spontaneously built up and had a strong element of interactivity between the artist and the audience.
It had an interactive Douglas Coupland messaging Service and the Successful Artist Index (Working Class Edition) With the index, I required visitors to the fair to list names of artists from working-class backgrounds who live solely off their art. No day jobs! A few names like Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley got on but, it remained quite empty.
Oh! What a time to be alive!
Big money. Contaminated water
White sheep kicking out black sheep
On a red coloured background with a lone cross
Rising rent. Deskilling
Grown Chinese man laid out flat on the beach
Celebrities with emergency helmets
Life jackets on pillars.
Königssee gold rush!
Oh! What a time to be alive!
It featured a collection of real and imagined experiences distilled through the lens of a stellar cast of fictitious artists and galleries. The visual/written language common to art magazines, catalogues, classified ads, and spam mail in combination with personal experiences, and the daily happenings during the show served as source material for the creation of the Alternate Art Fair. It was a fair within a fair where the artist took on the role of fair director and curator and gave access to anyone who wanted to participate in shaping it. The content was spontaneously built up and had a strong element of interactivity between the artist and the audience.
It had an interactive Douglas Coupland messaging Service and the Successful Artist Index (Working Class Edition) With the index, I required visitors to the fair to list names of artists from working-class backgrounds who live solely off their art. No day jobs! A few names like Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley got on but, it remained quite empty.
Oh! What a time to be alive!
Big money. Contaminated water
White sheep kicking out black sheep
On a red coloured background with a lone cross
Rising rent. Deskilling
Grown Chinese man laid out flat on the beach
Celebrities with emergency helmets
Life jackets on pillars.
Königssee gold rush!
Oh! What a time to be alive!
The Alternate Art Fair exists in two parts. While the first part revolved around creating a mock sketch of the fair on a wall, the second part will revolve around creating the fair in greater detail on paper and making an artist book out of the work.