Artspace

The Financial Report

Denis Beaubois, Melanie Gilligan, Matthew Griffin, Christian Jankowski, Andrew Liversidge, Dane Mitchell, Natalie Thomas

Curated by Mark Feary

Exhibition Dates
21 August - 29 September 2013

PUBLIC PROGRAM

The Financial Report Public Talk I with Dr Henry Ergas
When | Saturday 24 August, 3pm
Location | Artspace, Level 2, Seminar Room

The Financial Report Public Talk II with Peter Wilson and Carol Austin
When | Saturday 24 August, 3pm
Location | Artspace, Level 2, Seminar Room

The Financial Report draws on questions surrounding how artists are impacted by and attempt to reveal and subvert the complex mechanisms of monetary systems, while acknowledging the impossibility of comprehensively averting the permeating influences of these systems.

Overview

The Financial Report draws on questions surrounding how artists are impacted by and attempt to reveal and subvert the complex mechanisms of monetary systems, while acknowledging the impossibility of comprehensively averting the permeating influences of these systems. The exhibition takes form as a selective survey of strategies through which artists set out to draw attention to and, in some instances, undermine the ubiquity of their, and implicitly, our involvement and complicity in propelling and advancing capitalist systems.

Intrinsic within some of the projects are questions that extend beyond simple gestures of decrying capitalism to tease out more complicated questions of ethics arising out of and permeating through contemporary art and the markets that form around and in support of it. The project acknowledges the accelerated art markets of Europe and North America but centres on the specific context of Australia and what it means to participate in a cultural field that arguably precludes its primary producers from financial security.

Andrew Liversidge, 'For the Avoidance of Doubt (Quid Pro Quo and the Golden Torpor)($3000)', 2013, 92% copper, 6% aluminum, 2% nickel, courtesy the artist and The Commercial, Sydney. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.
The Financial Report, Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013.
Melanie Gilligan, 'Crisis in the Credit System', 2008, courtesy of the artist commissioned by Artangel, London. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.
Dane Mitchell, 'Untitled Letter 2 (Auckland Art Gallery)', 1998, courtesy of the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tämaki. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.
Matthew Griffin, 'Common Sense', 2009, courtesy of the artist. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.
Denis Beaubois, 'Currency', 2011, courtesy of the artist. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography. Denis Beaubois’ project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
Natalie Thomas, 'Appropriation, How Appropriate is it?', 2008, courtesy of the artist. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.
Natalie Thomas, 'Appropriation, How Appropriate is it?', 2008, courtesy of the artist. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photograph
Christian Jankowski, 'Kunstmarkt TV', 2008, courtesy of the artist and Meyer Kainer, Wien and Klosterfelde, Berlin. Installation view, Artspace, Sydney, 2013. Photo: silversalt photography.