Phyl Payne

News

OBJECTS IN WAITING BECOME GIFTS

Following the success of Objects in Waiting, Penny Whitehead and Daniel Simpkins will be curating an exhibition at Museum MAN (www.museumman.org) as part of the Liverpool Biennial fringe exhibitions. They are inviting all the artists who contributed to Objects in Waiting to participate in this follow up exhibition, GIFT. GIFT will initiate a process of exchange that will realise their object’s artistic potential and allow them to liberate themselves from the responsibility once and for all.

In a two day event at Museum MAN, visitors will be invited to request an object to take home as a gift, on the condition that they document their use of it accordingly. The curators will select those most deserving of the gift based on the requests that they receive and those selected will enter into a contract outlining their responsibility for the outcome.

In exchange for their object the artists will receive the documentation as a gift, an enduring record of the next stage in their object’s history, and all the documentation will be published in a bookwork. GIFT is inspired by the exchanges that have already taken place between the curators, exhibiting artists and visitors to Objects in Waiting, and is also a realisation of Penny’s own object in waiting - an essay by Dan Smith on the implications of gift-giving and exchange within an art context.