The Unfair Fair: The play's the thing

Friday, 22 February 2008

The play's the thing

ARTIST: Lili Reynaud Dewar
TITLE: Costume for performance - with child
DATE: 2008

Navy blue two piece suit, size age 3. Props attached to the suit with safety pins: 2 prints, shiny leather patches, various types of thread and cardboard. Costume for a performance with a very young child (3 years old), a very small person or a pygmy. The performance will not happen. The props give very vague indications on what performance it could be if it was to be.
-Lili Reynaud Dewar

ARTIST: Christodoulos Panayiotou
TITLE: Wonder Land
DESCRIPTION: 80 color slides
DATE: 2008

Wonder Land is the result of an extensive research in the historical archives of the city of Limassol exploring the mania of Limassolians to dress up as Disney's characters during the carnival parade (the most important social event of the island). The work covers the period from the end of 70s up to today.

ARTIST: Tereza Buskova
TITLE: Beauty For One Day
MEDIA/DESCRIPTION: Video documentation of a live performance in The Window Gallery, London

ARTIST: Ursula Mayer
TITLE: The Crystal Gaze
MEDIA: Digital print
DATE: 2008

About

This blog catalogues the inaugural UNFAIR FAIR, which took place in Rome from Friday 29 February to Monday 3 March 2008. The first UNFAIR FAIR project was a sort of event, situation, exhibition, intervention, action and infiltration timed to coincide with two new contemporary art fairs in Rome - ARTEcontemporaneamodernaROMA and ROMA (The ROAD TO CONTEMPORARY ART). The UNFAIR FAIR is in no way formally associated with these art fairs, though it does have a strategic relation to the mainstream economy they represent. Whereas the raison d'être of the contemporary art fair may be characterised by maximization and accumulation, the conditions of the UNFAIR FAIR relate more comfortably to the states of minimization and disintegration. The aim of the UNFAIR FAIR is to show the process of artistic production and transitional art works that index broader practices by each of the invited artists.
Click here for further information

The Principle of Equivalence - Well done, badly done, not done

In 1966, Robert Filliou proposed that the world economy no longer be considered from a political angle, but rather from a poetic point of view, so that work as pain would become work as play. From 1968, he developed his Principle of Equivalence - the principle of the equality in value of the Well Done, the Badly Done and the Not Done. Filliou proposed an unfinished work, by essence not done, but in the process of being done, realised in a state of "Permanent Creation" - "to decide nothing, to choose nothing, to want nothing, to possess nothing, fully awake, sitting quietly, doing nothing."

Going, going gone for ... how much?

The highest price ever paid for a Francis Bacon (£14 million), for a photograph (an Andreas Gursky, 1.7m)... all auction records were shattered in London last week. But who is buying art at these prices - and, frankly, is it worth it? Carole Cadwalladr went in search of the top bidders.

The Observer
Sunday February 11, 2007
Click here to read the article

Silly money

5 Dec 1766
Date of first sale held in Pall Mall, London by James Christie, founder of Christie's

$104.168,000
Record sale at a fine art auction: for Picasso's Garcon a la Pipe, May 2004, Sotheby's, New York

£186,645,960
Value of total sales realised last week at Sotheby's, London

40
Record number of days for an auction sale (for Duke of Buckingham's collection at Stowe House by Christie's in 1848)

£2.51bn
Total global arts sales by Christie's in 2006

85
Number of works sold for over £1m last week at Sotheby's and Christie's, London

£1.7m
The record price for a photograph sold at auction (Andreas Gursky's 99 Cents II, Diptychon sold last week at Sotheby's, London)

£70.4m
Total revenue from Christie's Post War and Contemporary Art Sale last Wednesday. This broke the record set by Sotheby's just 24 hours earlier for a contemporary art auction in Europe.