Present Tense
Micheal Do, curator of the Auckland Art Fair Projects 2021, speaks to participating artists Casey Carsel, Tanya Martusheff, Lucy Meyle, Elisabeth Pointon, Becky Richards, and Ashleigh Taupaki, in a roundtable discussion with The Art Paper Editor-in-Chief, Becky Hemus.
Micheal Do: Present Tense for the Auckland Art Fair is centred around gifting and exchange. In developing the exhibition, I asked: how do we build relationships with the Art Fair’s audiences that stressed a different type of art making—one rooted in community, ideas, rather than capitalistic exchange. It’s a reminder that there is more to art than its role as a commodity, which tends to be the central premise of an art fair. In a way, everyone’s building on little subversive acts that shifts this accepted historic notion.
Everyone here is so accustomed to presenting work at a gallery—whether it’s in an artist-run initiative, a commercial space, etc. I’d like to know what each of you had to do differently, for this particular context of the Art Fair. Because an art fair is a space for art, but it’s very different to a gallery. What are the ways that this has shaped your project?
Lucy Meyle: It was interesting to receive the email from you, Micheal, and then go, “Well, that’s not the venue that I normally think of my work as occupying.” The Art Fair is certainly much more commerce-centered than anywhere else that my work has previously been shown, and that does sit uncomfortably with me. But at the same time, it is a context as much as any other, with some of its attributes shared with art galleries or other institutions.
Taking the Art Fair as a starting point—as something that my project is responding to, rather than a context that it has been inserted into—felt important to me, and has definitely shaped the work that I have made.
MD: That’s interesting. As artists, or any creative person, you have this tension between the integrity of your artistic practice and the potential of selling out. So being involved in an art fair may encompass that latter feeling. I know many people are like, “The commercial world is gross,” but in fact, it’s one of the critical arms within the arts ecosystem. You may be at the beginning of thinking about how you shape your art and be an ‘artist’ while also thinking about some more commercial aspects to your making.
Elisabeth Pointon: I struggled the same way I think you did, Lucy. Coming out of art school it was really hammered into you that art is all about concept and research. If you’re an artist making money off your works, that was somehow a really negative or bad thing. I feel like now I’m at a point where I can start to undo that mentality. But I guess I have questions around places like art fairs—who gets to show, who gets to have a voice, who gets to speak and who gets to be represented? That’s why I think this has been a really interesting experience. The lineup of this project seems to cut across the status quo of an art fair, it does seem a little different to have people that look like us in spaces like that. It feels like a big deal.
Casey Carsel: I totally agree with that. I feel like the Art Fair context is definitely something that we are still existing within, but at the same time, this project was designed from its core to work against that. I feel freer than if I were in one of those dealer gallery booths, where I would be wondering how to make my practice slick when it isn’t. In this context, I can be a bit warmer, a little bit riskier perhaps. I appreciate the chance to stink the place up, literally and figuratively, through my work.
Becky Hemus: The visibility of each artist feels like a really integral thread. We go to places like the Art Fair to engage and learn, but projects such as this tend to get lost. They’ll be on a wall adjacent to a gallery, and there’s no one to speak about the work. There may be one catalogue you can pick up if you want to, but there’s no one to share the story, which I think is often so important, especially with artists who people aren’t as familiar with. With this project, the way that each of you and your artworks will engage with your audience is a form of activation.
Becky Richards: Yeah, totally. I think that was another real positive for me when we started talking about this project. That opportunity for direct human engagement is really exciting and really lovely. A proliferation of objects will be housed in this large structure, and the interaction with audience members will begin with me inviting them to choose an object to keep, something that speaks to them and that feels right for them in a haptic kind of way—which I imagine may take quite a long time, if you’re looking at 500 small things.
CC: I’m based between Tāmaki Makaurau and Chicago, but I have been stuck in Chicago since COVID lockdowns began. I have a friend and fellow artist who will be on the ground in Tāmaki Makaurau, Jordan Davey-Emms, who’s a wonderful artist in her own right. She will be installing the work for me, and running the interactions. I’m really excited for this work as a collaboration between us, where I created the textiles and will be present long-distance, and she’ll be doing the installation and physical interaction on that side.
MD: Lucy, your project because your project is embodied through your presence and performance.
LM: It’s going to be pretty low-key, I’m going to be there distributing catalogues with a branded t-shirt and cap. Same as people do on the street to promote brands like Uber Eats. Except I’m going to be trying to draw people in to apply for a twig [from a fallen bird’s nest]. The catalogue will also be displayed on one of those very generic wire frames that newspapers or real estate brochures are distributed from at the front of supermarkets. I think they are such beautiful objects, those wire frames, I’m glad to get to use them for this project.
MD: Each of you will present at the Fair over two sessions. Whereas with Elisabeth and Ashleigh, your artworks will unfold without your presence, and they are also exhibited offsite.
Ashleigh Taupaki: Yeah. I’m taking an idea and putting it into Yu Mei. It’s quite far away so nothing’s at the Fair. I’m collecting things from beaches [that my family has affiliations to], and creating some sort of landscape to bring context into the space.
I had an exhibition called Matā last October [at RM Gallery], and I encouraged people to touch the works as they were laid out on hammocks and beds and real comfy sorts of vessels so that these things could, I don’t know, be cared for. One of my friends went over to the thing, to the tallest stand, and started touching underneath. She’s like, “Oh, look at it. There’s sand on my hand!” I thought that was really cool. So yeah. I’m re-creating some sort of background to where my sculptures came from that people can touch.
EP: I will have postcards available at the Fair that people can take to get stamped at Tiffany & Co. We’ve had a couple of conversations about how people will know to go there and look at my artwork, but this seems like a nice way to activate it. The visitor gets something out of it, but they also have to put something in, to go and view it—which I think is fair enough.
MD: For all of the things that you can say about art fairs, they’re redeeming in that they provide an incredible, concentrated audience. It’s an easy way for curators, myself included, to see a snapshot of a local and global art scene at any given place, at a given time. Some people might be apprehensive about showing their work in a non-white cube space. And of course, Brian O’Doherty’s White Cube is a big part of our western art education. And in an art fair, while lots of walls are white, the spaces are incredibly busy and noisy. There’s lots of action, thoroughfares, and people walking through. For many of you, that’s been a paramount consideration. You’ve asked yourselves, how can my work have cut through? How can it rise above all the frenzy?
BR: Totally. But I haven’t had huge anxiety about the likely visual noise of The Cloud environment, because through conversation with you, Micheal, we quickly reached this idea that I could build a support structure that would have some sense of monumentality to it, drawing these small multitude of objects together in a comprehensive way. A structure that would have enough shift or enough presence to hold within that environment.
It has been a really fun excuse for me to work on something large and physically challenging, and muck around with materials other than ceramics. That lack of kind of foreknowledge of where it’s going and exactly what the quality of the space feels like has pushed me towards trying to make a support structure that’s really strong and quite adaptable.
LM: Maybe it was for some of those reasons you state, Micheal, that were making me feel uncomfortable about being in the Art Fair. But busy-ness and noisiness can be great companions for a project, as long as I’m not trying to ignore them! Hopefully the birds’ nest catalogue can harness some of that, as well as being sited along the edges of the space. I think a lot about the extractive practices that can be involved in human relationships with the more-than-human, but also about how to bring forth those ideas with some measure of humour and absurdity. In this regard, there are aspects of the Art Fair that have been very fruitful for me to work against or to take advantage of.
MD: Tanya, traditionally your work has existed on the floor, almost as a topography. In this iteration, some of your works have now migrated onto the wall, which is a real shift for you.
TM: Yeah definitely. I have always considered moving the work onto the wall, so I thought, “Why not do it here?” I’ve had experiences in galleries where the work would get kicked or knocked around. The wall could be a little safer, but people will still end up touching the work because the soap invites the touch. It has an unusual texture, and when people don’t know what that is, they want to feel it to find out.
It’s nice that there’s this physical interaction. What I struggled with was the gift aspect of it. I never really thought about my work as being bought or sold, because I really enjoy the ephemeral quality of the materials that I work with. They can just fall apart, or they can’t really be owned. So to interpret that into the context of the Art Fair, where something is up for sale (in this case I’m giving it away) was a challenge. I have made the soaps small like guest soaps, but they are decorative, the kind of thing that you don’t use.
I grew up in a household that had one soap that was decorative, not for use, you could only look at it. Then there was the soap that you could use. I tend to reuse soap in my practice, so a lot of times it contains dirt and particles. But it’s still intended to be set aside. When I recast it into shapes, it has the inherent history of previous projects. The pieces installed on the wall at the Art Fair will have that history attached to them, but for the mini soaps, I needed to order more to fill the quota.
I thought about what to put in these soaps that will convince people not to want to use them. How do I make them kind of gross, or how do I make them pretty so that the object isn’t opened, that it’s kept forever? Soap doesn’t really break down, but keeping it in plastic and having it nice and clean, I hope that will encourage people to keep the artworks and that they will be preserved for a long time.
MD: We’ve spoken about artists whose work don’t normally lend themselves to this sort of audience interaction. But then on the other hand, Becky, this is a really good context for your work as you court transformational encounters with your audience.
BR: Absolutely. It has felt like a timely opportunity to test out the ability of these objects to head out into the world and be utilised by other people. I couldn’t ask for a more fitting platform. The removal of a commercial aspect, so people aren’t paying money to receive these objects, gives a liberty that wouldn’t exist if they were purchased for hard cash. It opens up this space where the work can operate poetically, or follow a line of humour or follow a line of ridiculousness, in a way that I don’t think would be possible if we were within one of the commercial gallery booths. The fact that they’re offered, for free, is really interesting. It comes back to the concept of this project in terms of what we gain when we operate outside a commercial realm, what gets lost, what gets delimited as soon as it becomes about money.
MD: Fantastic. This was actually a great opportunity, and such good practice for us to start articulating what it is we’ve been working on for the last five, six months. It will be interesting to see how the reality manifests, what the project looks like when the Fair opens.
See everyone very soon. Thanks.
BH: Thank you so much everyone.
All: Bye!
Tanya Martusheff, Slough. Installation view, RM Gallery, June 2020
“I will be exhibiting soap that has been cast as handrails. It is glycerin-based and has been tinted with mouthwash, a product we might use on a regular basis. I will also be making little pieces of soap that will be wrapped up for the audience or visitors to take away with them.
The lockdowns have closed us off from our normal social networks, the way we work in a community, and the way we function within these systems. I’ve been working with soap prior to the pandemic, but it’s become known as one of the main ways of protecting against viruses through washing. On the flip side of this, we have handrails that are communal—we all use them for assistance, and now they are seen as something that transmits the virus between people.”
— Tanya Martusheff
Tanya Martusheff, installation strategy notes for Present Tense, Auckland Art Fair Projects 2021
Tanya Martusheff, soap making process for of a dilemma, Auckland Art Fair Projects 2021
Tanya Martusheff, soap making process for of a dilemma, Auckland Art Fair Projects 2021
“I’m working on a multitude of handheld ceramic objects with forms that echo eggs, stones and seedpods, which are designed to be used to fulfill a personal, poetic type of function for each audience member.”
— Becky Richards
Becky Richards' glazed work before firing. Courtesy of the artist
Raw forms: These small works are formed from a range of clay bodies (types) including Stoneware Paper clay (has paper pulp mixed through to help prevent cracking and open up the clay body), Red Raku (a dark red clay with heavy grog that looks a bit like brick when fired), Terra Cotta from Driving Creek (orange in colour, sometimes with small stones in the body).
Becky Richards' bisqued works, in the process of unloading, after the kiln has cooled. Courtesy of the artist
Becky Richards' bisqued works, in the process of unloading, after the kiln has cooled. Courtesy of the artist
Becky Richards' glazed work after a Cone 6 firing (1200ºC). Courtesy of the artist
Bisque firing: the first firing is called a bisque fire (derived from ‘biscuit’, because the work comes out dry and firm, like a (not very nice) biscuit. I run an 18.5-hour bisque programme, which is a lot longer and slower than what manypeople will run. This is to prevent any breakages in the solid forms. My bisque programme goes up to 1000ºC. The forms come out porous and sandy to the touch. The purpose of the bisque firing is to add strength and produce a surface that will take aglaze easily and consistently.
Becky Richards' bisqued pods. Courtesy of the artist
Taupaki gathered sand for her project, One, from beaches in Hauraki. Photo: courtesy of the artist
“My work is a collection of sand from different beaches in Hauraki—Opoutere, Onemana, Whangamata and Whiritoa—that are really important to my iwi and whānau. I’m making structures so that people are able to touch the sand and have some sort of remnant on their hands as they interact with it. There’s a poem that will be made large scale, but also printed on a small-scale poster so that people can take this home with them.”
— Ashleigh Taupaki
Taupaki gathered sand for her project, One, from beaches in Hauraki. Photo: courtesy of the artist
“What I’m working on is a catalogue of twigs and fibres from a bird’s nest that fell from a tree in my backyard. The audience can apply to receive one of the twigs, and if successful they are required to relocate it where another bird might find it and re-use it for making a new nest. The nest came down because I was trimming some ivy that was suffocating another tree. I felt really guilty about it and started Googling 'What do you do? Do you put it back up? Is that what you’re supposed to be doing?' But apparently, what you can do is take it apart and redistribute the materials around green spaces, so different birds can then come back and pull the debris into a new cycle of nest building.
There is something there for me about receiving and then giving away, or the recirculating of things—not just the twigs from the bird's nest, but the ideas and images I have associated with it. For me the guilt about the bird's nest falling down hasn't really faded, and I guess I'm partially re-locating it in someone else's backyard, or their neighbourhood park.”
— Lucy Meyle
Lucy Meyle, sticker designs for the Local Branch catalogue. Courtesy of the artist
Lucy Meyle, image upload and design process for Local Branch catalogue. Courtesy of the artist
Lucy Meyle, catalogue design for Local Branch. Courtesy of the artist
Meyle scanning twigs for Local Branch. Courtesy of the artist
Lucy Meyle, twigs, packaged and labelled ready to be sent out. Courtesy of the artist
“I’m presenting three artworks with Tiffany & Co. The largest one will be an inflatable text, seven-metres long and one-and-half-metres high, that just says ‘whoever’ with a full stop. There will also be a video recreating advertorial campaigns and a postcard element that you can take to Tiffany & Co. and get stamped by a retailer who works there.
When I began researching the project and looking into Tiffany & Co., I came across the 2015 Will You campaign, which was one of the first gay marriage campaigns to ever be launched using real-life couples. My video is based on this, utilising inflatable car yard air dancers and waving people as the predominant visuals, but also incorporating elements of heavily romanticised, black and white, smoky perfume adverts.
Language accessibility, visibility, and representation are continued interests in my practice. I often draw from my experiences in the workplace at a luxury car dealership.
As a Pākehā and Indian artist, my position within masculine-led environments will mirror the experiences of many minorities in the workplace and in the art world. I actively try to take up as much space as possible, because I'm well aware that my time in these spaces is fleeting and conditional, and sometimes labelled ‘trendy’. But yeah, I make big fuckoff works to counteract this.”
— Elisabeth Pointon
Elisabeth Pointon, design sketches for SOMETHING BIG. Courtesy of the artist
Elisabeth Pointon, design sketches for SOMETHING BIG. Courtesy of the artist
Elisabeth Pointon, fabrication process for SOMETHING BIG. Courtesy of the artist
Casey Carsel, knobl—soup! process documentation photograph. Courtesy of the artist
“My work for this project is mostly textile-based, the result of an exploration of the historic relationship between Jewish culture and garlic, and, in particular, how that relationship filters down to the present day (or doesn't). This manifests in a large textile, accompanied by a series of smaller textiles scented with garlic that the audience will be able to take home with them.
The relationship between Jewish culture and garlic was really tight-knit before the 20th century, basically before the Holocaust. It was a big symbol of Jewish identity, a big ingredient in Jewish cuisine, and also a really significant food in Jewish celebrations. Yet it was also used as part of a series of dangerous antisemitic tropes about the 'inherent smell' supposedly emanating from every Jew. A lot of knowledge of that history, a lot of the way that garlic has been an identity-marker, disappeared in the late 20th and 21st centuries. I'm interested in that story. I'm not necessarily looking just to bring it back, but rather to examine its absence, and the presence that absence forms.”
— Casey Carsel
Casey Carsel, Shum Klum. Installation view, RM Gallery, November 2019. Courtesy of the artist
This conversation first appeared in The Art Paper Issue 00. Buy it here.