25th August - 22nd September 2011
The List (pages 68-69)
By Rosalie Doubal
Rosalie Doubal lifts the lid on an inventive new art market opening in Glasgow this month and profiles some of the artists showcasing their work
Vault is a new art fair that will take place inside an art installation, set inside an arts space, that houses artists’ studios. Like a Russian doll the event playfully peals back the dominant layers of today’s art market, to reveal independent practice as ripe for investment, while simultaneously granting young artists the opportunity to sell their work.
Curator-led by Patricia Fleming in collaboration with not-for-profit arts organisation UZ Arts, this new fair has been programmed specifically for the recently-refurbished Briggait building - previously home to Glasgow’s fish market. The organisers have invited some of the city’s most exciting independent organisations, including SWG3, David Dale Gallery and The Mutual, to sell work by early career artists alongside more established practitioners such as Alex Frost, Christine Borland and Martin Boyce.
Paying homage to the mercantile history of the building, many works have been made for the fair with the theme ‘art and commerce’ in mind. Interest-free loan scheme Own Art has pledged its assistance and loans of up to £2000 will be available for every sale. While exchanges are certainly on the agenda, the fair promises to be an impressive exhibit in its own right, with site-specific commissions, tours and workshops also on the agenda.
Dawn Youll
Youll’s high-gloss, high-finish ceramics depict familiar objects or homely vignettes. Beautifully evoking notions of ritual, commemoration and souvenir, the Glasgow-trained artist is interested in our use of ceramics to create votive-like objects that represent reflection or provide a mental link. The recent winner of a prestigious Arts Foundation Fellowship, Youll’s work has been widely exhibited across Europe and has been presented at London’s V&A Museum. The artist was also last year selected by the Scottish Arts Council and Crafts Council UK to represent the UK at the Ceramics New Generation exhibition in Paris. These are ornate, intelligent and often-humorous works that explore our shared desire to collect, organise and display. www.dawnyoull.co.uk
Ellie Harrison
Short-listed for this year’s Converse/Dazed Emerging Artist Award, Ellie Harrison has been garnering much attention over recent years for her works of obsessive documentation and, latterly, for her political and activist-based art. Often relying on the internet or public interaction, her works parody bureaucratic processes. As demonstrated by recent project A Brief History of Privatisation (Inspace, Edinburgh, until 4 September), they mostly work towards highlighting the slow and severe annexation of every aspect of our lives to capital. For Vault, Harrison will gamble her entire artist’s fee (£500) with fair goers, by setting-up and running a hoopla stall, inviting punters to take one free throw each in an attempt to claim some of the artist’s earnings. www.ellieharrison.com
Risa Tsunegi
A Glasgow School of Art 2009 MFA graduate, Japanese artist Risa Tsunegi is a fresh talent and makes large-scale sculptural works and paintings. Often forcing an uneasy navigation of the spaces that they inhabit, they have in the past materialised as obtruding bars or jutting girders. Although adhering to an anti-aesthetic, Tsunegi’s forms are strangely purposeless, and her architectural constructions play out tensions between ideas of use and uselessness, objects and art objects. For Vault, Tsunegi will present a new work that reflects the current condition of the Briggait building, drawing on its interesting structure and adapted usage. www.risatsunegi.com
Vault, the Briggait, Glasgow, Fri 9-Sun 11 September 2011.
