The Neo-Imperialist Function Of Public Art Is To Clear A Path For Economic Expansion

Text work/ billboard

Commissioned by Gavin Wade for Public Structures, a special project for the Second Guangzhou Triennial BEYOND: an extraordinary space of experimentation for modernization curated by Hou Hanru, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guo Xiaoyan

Also shown:
Miss Mao, Blacklist Projects, 14 July – 11 August. The show travels to Beijing, China from September 17 - September 30. The Gao Brothers Studio, No.4, Jiuxianqiao Road Chaoyang District Beijing, China. Private View 6pm Thursday 16 September 2006.

Mark McGowan’s Festival - Week 1 curated by Dave Beech, Space Station Sixty-Five, London, 14 - 21 July, 2006.

The Neo-Imperialist Function Of Public Art... is the latest in a series of text works entitled The functions of public art by Freee. Previous works in the series are, The Aesthetic Function Of Public Art; The Economic Function Of Public Art; The Function Of Public Art For Regeneration; and, The Social Function Of Public Art. Each work in the series uses changes in site, scale and technique to extend the discursive potential of the statement that it highlights. A new function was devised for the Guangzhou Triennial that interrogates the function of public art in relations between Europe and China. The function of public art in these relations is tied to commercial enterprise and the hope of establishing or maintaining an advantage in an economy shaped by global asymmetries. For this reason the text for The Neo-Imperialist Function is meant to be always out of place – not fully at home and therefore not giving advantage clearly to one culture or another. And the sense of the work being out of place continues in its presence within the exhibition. As well as being part of Gavin Wade’s curated project within the gallery The Neo-Imperialist Function will be shown on a billboard site in the city. In the gallery, then, the work exists, essentially, as a document of a work that exists elsewhere, while on the street it loses all the advantages of its art status by being remote from the institutional context of its social legitimation. It is in respect of these questions that the billboard containing the text of The Neo-Imperialist Function will be shown first on a Birmingham street in Cantonese and then hand-painted on a billboard in Guangzhou from a photograph of the billboard in its post-industrial English setting.

Freee produced a poster/brochure to document the project with a text by Andrew Glyn entitled Global Imbalances. Download brochure (160kb)

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