ART&RESEARCH

During a talk given at Tate Britain in March 2006 on the topic of collaboration, British artist Chris Evans made an admission about his working practice that may have surprised some in the audience. He announced, to the sound of muted laughter, that he was ‘rarely interested in mutual reward’ when engaged in collaborative work, and that, in fact, the ‘collaborative element’ of his work – in part, meeting and convincing people to take part in his projects – was not something that he relished. It might also be true to say that this is also how the artist feels about working with art institutions, commissioners and curators. As the politicization of culture – its utilitarian function as social ameliorative or harbinger of urban regeneration – intensifies, the relationships between institutions (and their sponsors), artists, curators and critical writers become ever more entwined and dependent. Evans’ projects increasingly operate along the fault lines of these relationships, by on the one hand evoking old systems of support and patronage, and on the other, by inserting, virally, new protocols or processes within existing systems. And, although ‘collaboration’ is something that the artist endures, reflecting upon the fact that he puts it at the centre of his practice whilst at the same time having an antipathetic relationship to it is the key to understanding his work, and also points to the delicate negotiation between the forces of an almost entirely instrumentalized culture and the desire for an autonomous art practice that all artists are now engaged with. Collaboration, consultation and negotiation are all skills in which today’s artist must be adept. Evans makes these processes the theme, and the site of his work.

In her essay, ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents’ (2006), critic and art historian Claire Bishop argues that what she terms the ‘social turn’ in art prompts a corresponding ‘ethical turn in art criticism’, causing critics to concentrate on the degree to which artists radically question their own ‘authorial’ position rather than making aesthetic, or any other kind of judgements. Although what she considers to constitute the ‘social’ turn is difficult to gauge, or whether there has been an attendant ontological shift that might be implied by such a phrase, the essay does chronicle a tendency in many contemporary practices to produce ‘projects’, the material forms of which are often determined as much by the artist as by his or her collaborators. The types of practices that come under the rubric of Bishop’s ‘socially collaborative’ art are many and varied, but her polemic advocates those practices that, ‘however uncomfortable, exploitative, or confusing’ invite its audience to, ‘confront darker, more painfully complicated considerations of our predicament’.[1] Evans’ work, although not cited by Bishop, would certainly seem to fit this characterisation of the ‘best collaborative practices’, even if it might not so readily offer up the required ‘aesthetic’ dimension that presumably makes the art critic’s job easier.

Maybe the best way to illustrate both Evans’ ambivalent relationship to the process of collaboration and also his talent for confronting the dark and painful complications of the modern world is to look at the form the works usually take when they are exhibited, and also to consider what isn’t disclosed or displayed. The artist’s projects are more often than not represented by maquettes, screenprints or spray paintings that illustrate proposed sculpture. These designs result from a series of conversations between artist and specific collaborators. The artist acts as a kind of art consultant who chooses his own clients and the ‘solutions’ that are sought are often enigmatic or obscure. Just why would the managing director of a multi-national company choose to design a sculpture, in consultation with an artist, and agree to have it sited on a piece of scrubland in the middle of the industrial town of Järvakandi, Estonia?

The extent to which the consulted person is in control of his or her choices, or rather the amount of coercion that occurs during meetings, is unknown. Collaboration is a slippery notion in the context of art production, but one that when reflected upon opens up the possibility of understanding a great many contemporary practices that seek to conjoin social aims with aesthetic ones.