For this exhibition Barbara Knezevic is re-exhibiting the artwork Heavy Weather Structure. The components of the work – seven supermarket-bought umbrellas – have been made by anonymous worker/s in an unknown factory, for an unknown wage. These are then fashioned into an art object by the artist.Unable to be present for it’s installation, Knezevic has engaged an individual for an hourly rate to act on her behalf to source, assemble and install the work.
In this incarnation of the work, the transactions and negotiations that have taken place in order to produce this artwork are made public. Part of what is suggested is that an artist’s time, in terms of how we understand it in an industrialised economy -where workers are awarded an hourly rate- has no value. Instead, artists are valued largely on the basis of their object output, more like piece-work. These output objects accrue a value that has no correlation to the labour time involved in making them, making it’s potential critical and monetary value largely speculative. This in turn forms an abstraction of artistic labour. Wish Fulfilment folds this abstraction upon itself as a means of looking closer at the relationship between production, value and the language of objects.
Wish Fulfilment
Barbara Knezevic
24/11 – 11/12/11