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'xero, kline & coma', curatorial research project investigating the relationship between art and politics

Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s collaborative work addresses the legacy of modernism. It explores avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century in the context of a changing landscape of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. They explore the relationship between art and politics, and the role irony and belief play in its current articulation.

Alongside their art practice, they run a project space, 'xero, kline & coma'. The research objective of the project space devised by Pil and Galia Kollectiv, is to investigate the relationship between art and politics through a curatorial programme. The research focuses on questions of artistic labour and authorship. In a climate of reduced funding for the arts, the gallery tests the possibilities of non-commercial exhibition making, while foregrounding questions of exploitation and the production of value through cultural capital, immaterial labour and social networks. This interest in artistic labour is exemplified in an exhibition by Sophie Carapetian, which presented an archive of interviews with members of artists’ unions and art strikes as a means of rethinking the organization of workers in post-Fordist labour. Future exhibitions include the outcomes of research into creative industry in East London conducted by Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex).

The program focuses primarily on solo exhibitions by internationally established as well as emerging artists developed through a specific dialogue with Pil and Galia Kollectiv. A commitment to critically engaged art is central to the curatorial strategy. As well as commissioning new work and selecting work assessed for its contribution to the overarching thematic concerns of the program and developed through dialogue, Pil and Galia Kollectiv also use the project space as a research resource, hosting events, talks and screenings to advance the discussions around artistic labour in a non-commercial context.