From 2004 to 2008 I practiced as an artist within a self-invented ideological dogma framed as –
All Theory. No Practice. under which I removed the material production of all art-making as well as physical exhibitions entirely. I worked in textual form, publishing ideas, film treatments and manifestos for works on alltheorynopractice.com as well as in publications under the ATNP imprint, something I continue to do today.
Let's travel back in time now, to eons ago in contemporary art years...
Its mid-2004. I am in my final year of a bone dry MFA at WITS University. I send out printed copies of a concise monograph titled Modern Amusement to a handful of key galleries in Johannesburg. My intention? To introduce myself and build a relationship with a gallery in the knowledge I have expensive work I want to make and need representation to achieve this. Warren Siebrits responds kindly with a coffee and a sit down. Across the road (literally) Linda Givon at Goodman Gallery responds with a phone call followed by an emailed contract for a solo show booked at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg for 25 June to 16 July 2005. The contract details the terms and gallery costs of the show, but makes no mention of representing me as an artist. I think; 'this is how things must be done' and reply with a signed contract in the affirmative. Easy.
Here's the thing though... the Modern Amusement monograph simply showed a series of ideas for works, mostly written as short essays supported and annotated by careful references and staged images. But I hadn't actually made any of the work. For three years prior to this time I had been employed as a designer and art director in Dublin and London. I suddenly realised with creeping dread that my slick design and packaging of Modern Amusement had given Linda Givon the impression that all the works featured in the monograph were made and ready to go. Rather than function as an investment case as I had intended Modern Amusement to be, it had instead made me appear to be one of those freakish artists whose work is all done six months before the show opens. And more importantly, I was fully aware of the cost of producing these ideas and how spectacularly far this total fell outside the range of my financial capacity at the time. Being a student and all.
'It's cool' – I think – 'we'll do production costs later'.
Above: Modern Amusement monograph – first published 2004
Above: Installation view – Or Until the World Improves, The Premises Gallery, Johannesburg (10 – 24 July 2004)
Four months pass... and I have to make a solo exhibition to complete that MFA. I am also employed at this time as gallery manager of The Premises Gallery run by the trinity session (Stephen Hobbs, Marcus Neustetter, Kathryn Smith) for whom I also work as a researcher/designer in lieu – by careful arrangement – of having to lecture at WITS in fulfilment of my merit scholarship. I ask my employers if it'd be cool if I did the show 'at their place', so to speak. Stephen and Marcus kindly agree (thank you both – Kathryn had resigned at this point, but thank you too for hiring me in the first place) and I produce my first gallery solo show titled Until the World Improves, from 10 to 24 July 2004.
The exhibition consists of a sparse installation (Spoiler alert! Nothing was for sale). Just a copy of the Modern Amusement monograph lit by a lamp on a desk with a chair on a small wooden stage. Surrounding this are six tall thin black timber planks – 5m in length. The planks are fitted – standing vertically – to the exact height of the floor to ceiling. The large, double-volume singular gallery space is otherwise completely empty. It's also winter, and to make the effect of the desk lamp work I keep all the gallery lights off. Bleak would be an understatement.
The exhibition was designed to allow a visitor to the gallery to sit at the desk and read my Modern Amusement monograph. Like, actually read it (for context; this was 2004 and cell phone screens were lumo green). Installed on the wall in front of the desk is an audio speaker playing the soundtrack from a video work of mine detailed in Modern Amusement, titled The Healthy World of Primitive Building Methods. At the time I had not made the video, just the sound track but I think; if you sit and read my written description of the video in Modern Amusement while simultaneously hearing the soundtrack and sitting in a gallery installation that looks like the video itself (in the video black sticks fill a Mies van der Rohe interior the height of floor to ceiling) – then, in a sense, at this exact moment my video completes itself in the mind of the visitor. But the act of rapture exists in a third space beyond a purely text-based description and transcends a real-time experience of the actual video work.
As Ilya Kabakov better describes; “between the beginning of the work and it's ‘unfinishedness’ – a free space appears, a duration which is filled with questions, conjectures and reflections.”
So, key messaging from the show; dark room, creepy audio, lots of questions.
And art homework.
Above: Still image from The Healthy World of Primitive Building Methods.
Below: The homepage for alltheorynopractice.com as it appeared in 2005
Unfortunately for my career Linda Givon came to my exhibition and promptly cancelled my future show at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg scheduled for 25 June – 16 July 2005. Bleak. I was kind of relieved the how-to-pay-for-the-exhibition paradox had resolved itself so neatly for me but was also kind of very keen on the exhibition I had planned for the Goodman. The show was titled Twice upon a time and would've been totally awesome.
With a now wide open schedule... I make a website. The idea being that it'll function both as a means to house the evolving ideas in the Modern Amusement monograph and as context in which to publish new ones. I buy www.alltheorynopractice.com (of course), learn basic programming through Adobe Dreamweaver and make a tiny website that goes live in May 2005. The idea of All Theory. No Practice. as the defining ideological dogma under which I would practice as an artist begins to coalesce and harden from then on.
Soon after this I applied to the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam using the printed Modern Amusement monograph as the delivery device. I was shortlisted for an interview and flew to Holland with more printed copies of a now slightly expanded and updated Modern Amusement monograph, a concise website in alltheorynopractice.com and branded ALL THEORY. NO PRACTICE.com t-shirts as bizarre gifts for the interview board members. Art merch. The interview was a disaster, they thought I was a normal artist that made stuff, and after an awkward discussion about Portrait of Dorian Grey as it related to my art practice... (FYI: not a good reference) I had to admit to a governing board of mostly older male Europeans and one Canadian that I didn't know anything about Dorian Grey and that I'd developed this weird philosophy because I couldn't afford to make the works I wanted to, which were complicated and expensive films to be screened in galleries. But I figured if I got into their equally weird art school something great would come of it. Bet on it. They didn't. So I flew home resolved to remove all material production of any art making entirely from my practice – nothing is for sale and the king has no clothes. Until the world improved, I would focus on the writing of ideas and things to do, in the future.
I am now in the future. And still making some of those ideas.
Given the material nature of my practice at present, the All Theory. No Practice. mantra might ring as hollow as our echo-chambered times – but it was borne long, long ago of something very real, and all mine.
