I have recently been volunteering at the current exhibition How to Turn the World by Hand Mobile Bazaar@ the Collective Gallery. Helping out behind the scenes, the usual painting of walls and odd jobs as well as creating the sinage for the exhibition. I have even done a shift manning the bazaar which was quite a unique experience. The best part of it was taken up by talking to a rather interesting communist tramp who educated me on the beauty of state farms, how electric trams were the way forward in logistics and confiding in me that he was actually on magic mushrooms. As you can tell a great day all round. That aside, the exhibition itself deals with some quite interesting and potent concepts, some of the more obvious being: trade routes, travel, capitalism, consumerism, materialism as well as highlighting East/ West devide. As far as the actual aesthetic goes, it is not the most ground breaking exhibitions. As you walk in the Feral Trade Cafe has set up shop - as the makeshift polyethane signs ouside so blatently point out. They are selling the usual hand picked teas, organic honey (from Ilkley may I add) and fair trade coffees. The table is set up with images of all the trade routes of the all goods they sell with details of this on the wall. As you move through to Gallery 1 it is set up as a 'bazaar'. It sells goods from Istanbul and Bejing as part of The Arrow Factory and PiST galleries collaboration with the Collective. These institutions have hand picked items from that country and sell them in an alternative city in seperate countries. The items are set out all over the floor in a 'market' style, I would not describe it as a bazaar perse, bizzare maybe, but not bazaar. There is not enough going on for it to be described as a bazaar. When I think of bazaars, I think of the tanneries and hustle of bustle of Fez in Morocco or monkeys stealing things from stalls in India. Not some shoes in the middle of a white cube gallery space. In Gallery 2 they have set up a Sunday market, where people are invited to display themed items each Sunday for the duration of the exhibition (see end of post for details). Now this I liked, the idea of bringing a market type show to the Collective, truely going against the ideology of the Collective. It is an opportunity for less well known artists and writers to show some work in quite a well known gallery around these parts.
Sunday 24 April | Craft
Sunday 1 May | Artist's Multiples
Sunday 8 May | Illustration
Sunday 15 May | Publications
Sunday 22 May | Anything goes
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