The exhibition consists of a number of shop bought coat hooks mounted around the walls of the gallery. This is an Art joke – maybe with a serious point – but if you don’t know the artists or do the research it will be pretty meaningless. And pointless. I am pretty sure Urs Bechdel doesn’t exist. The blurb from Outpost describes him as masculine but web searches reveal no artist of that name. Of course Urs Bechdel may be entirely fictional or a pseudonym of Maria Guggenbichler (aha a clue in the Outpost hand out says ‘Bechdel donates a percentage of his profits to support art by female conceptual artists’) and Maria includes Urs Bechdel in a list of male artists on her website ‘Clever Men’s Art’ which is ‘… a response to the fact that the art world gladly incorporates feminism, immaterial labour, care work, unprofessionalism, anti-hierarchical structures, institutional critique and everyday aesthetics as long as they are authored by men.’ (Guggenbichler 2014) Or he could be a character created by Rosalie Shweiker who collaborates with Guggenbichler, I found this on her website. Or he could be the product of a collaboration between the two. Or i could be very wrong and this review itself a waste of time.
Figure 1 from Rosalie Shweiker website
I am quite interested in the way both women treat art, and if I really wanted to be an Artist with a capital ‘A’ I would probably feel the same way
especially if I had trained to be an artist (with a capital A) The work they produce is their response to the Art World, or maybe the world as they see it – one that won’t let them in? or a world that is ‘authored by men’? I wonder why they want to be Artists in this world. There is always the money of course, but that is hardly a good enough reason they could probably make more doing something else. Because they are/were good at art, did the training etc. and now feel they have the right? Both women seem to be making headway in the Art World, which I guess implies some sort of success in their terms.
The trouble with this exhibition is just its lack of funniness; to me it seems very sad. I want to think that it is impossible to parody the Art World and still try to exist within that world but of course it isn’t. I wish them luck.
Outpost is funded by the National Lottery and the Arts Council.
Works Cited
Guggenbichler, Maria. mariaguggenbichler. 2014. http://mariaguggenbichler.com/clever-mens-art/ (accessed july 20, 2014).
Schweiker, R. rosalieschweiker/work. 2014. http://www.rosalieschweiker.info/texts/ (accessed August 1, 2014).