ARTISTS TALKING

‘Do Something’ at the Floating ip gallery in Manchester is one of those shows that doesn‘t come round as often as it should. Resembling a miniature of Ilya Kabakov’s Palace of Projects the submissions for the open exhibition are a direct response to the injunction ‘do something’. Submissions are in the form of proposals or documentation. They are mainly text–based, but also contain video, photographs, 35mm slides, sound, etc; all are proxies and substitutes. The gallery space resembles an archive library in a state of flux. In this office aesthetic of the museum curator or anthropologist workspace, the artists’ proposals and protestations read like crazed patent applications. At the outset, the gallery is in a state of preparation, stacked with tables, video and DVD facilities, a slide projector room and so on; maybe not all of this will be needed, but the gallery is ready nonetheless, as if waiting for something to be done.

The more successful pieces are the simple and profane such as Pavel Buchler‘s three–word statement in the centre of an A4 sheet of white paper which says simply ‘Make nothing happen’ or Georgio Sadotti’s GO FUCK YOURSELF. Nick James presents a darkly comic proposition in which “everyone in Manchester will turn on their vacuum cleaners at the same time. This will create a giant black hole which, if my calculations are precise, will hover over Salford Quays about fifteen feet in the air”. Some of the artists seem to have taken it just a bit too seriously, as if they were applying for a retrospective at the Guggenheim, but it is the outrageous proposals that win the day, such as John Russell’s Idea: A Fox Hunt Chasing a Yorkshire Miner. There are far too many to mention, so can I suggest to Floating ip: bring out the book Do Something.