Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of the West of England, Bristol
What do artists do?
This output consists of a series of works arising from Voss’s involvement in an Arts Council England funded practice-led research project in 2008 directed by Lead Artist Phyllida Barlow to explore the impact on artists of the persistent emphasis on the commodification of the art object.
Sixteen participants, selected for their previous contributions within fine art production and exhibition, engaged with and studied processes of producing art work in a suite of shared studios. The artists were not expected to produce completed outcomes in the form of artworks. The primary focus of the project was, instead, to investigate the premise that an ignorance of how art is made and how artists work is prevalent at all levels. Notions of process and commodity, consumerism and display were also addressed by the studio critiques, seminars, and exhibition and exposition of art works during and after the project.
Skit, a performance in the form of a conversation between Voss and project member David Cheeseman, was presented at Warwick Arts Centre in 2008, a verbal engagement with the project’s themes, but also challenging the instruction not to produce. Ironically, the residence resulted in several commissions, including Camp for the group exhibition Betrayal (August 2009) at the Whitecross Gallery, London (www.artrabbit.com/uk/events/event/13248/betrayal). Voss exchanged his digital image with ‘Galloping Horses’ from the adjacent restaurant, displacing one work from its high art and the other from its decorative context, invoking the project’s themes about display and commodification. Love in Another Country (2012) was commissioned for the inaugural exhibition Switch at the Baltic39 Gallery, Newcastle on Tyne, April-June 2012 (balticmill.com/whats-on/Baltic-39/exhibitions/detail/switch-selected-by-phyllida-barlow), which was a follow on from the project. A suite of prints was produced by the group in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art, an edition of which is now owned by Arts Council England.
