Franz West - Adaptive

Franz West Adaptive 2003

Viennese artist Franz West's work is driven by an interest in the use of the objects he creates, much more so than by an idea of their formal completion. His Adaptives are objects that are designed to handled, used, passed around and engaged with through forms of childish play. Through his work he blends his interests in physical engagement - inspired by the work of the Viennese Actionists - with his study of Freudian  psychology and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and an interest in disconcertingly awkard aesthetic qualities that border on the disgusting.

This particular Adaptive was produced as an edition to coincide with his 2003 show at The Whitechapel Gallery in London; it intentionally sits somewhere between being a sausage and a turd; input and output; product and waste.

Martha Friedman - 'Yucca Column'

Martha Friedman - 'Yucca Column'

2006, Urethane foam, paint and stretch wrap

'Bangers' 2007 Cast bronze, wood and paint

Gordon Matta Clark - Food

Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden, and Gordon Matta-Clark in front of Food, restaurant, New York, 1971

Photograph by Richard Landry, writing by Gordon Matta-Clark.

Food was a restaurant in New York's SoHo, founded by artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Caroline Goodden and Tina Girouard. More a utopian aritsts' commune than a business operation, it's model was essentially economically unsustainable and in this respect it raised questions about how we might measure the success of such a project. Lasting slightly under 3 years Food became the hub of the local arts community, providing meals cooked and served by artists to aritsts, with the preparation and servcice becoming performance.

video still



Food actually pre-dated and possibly influenced many trends that are now so ubiquitous in inner-city eateries that it is hard imagine them as at all radical - locally-sourced seasonal ingredients, an open-plan design allowing customers to see the chefs, a fully-vegetarian menu for 2 nights per week, and Sushi: It was in fact Robert Rauschenberg's assistant Hisachika Takahashi who first served 'raw mackerel with wasabi sauce' at the restaurant.



As well as conventional meals, performance-dinners also took place and artists were invited to prepare and serve the food. Most famous perhaps was Matta-Clark's own Bone Dinner: Oxtail soup, roasted marrow-bone, frogs legs and other boney edibles. For $4 you could eat your meal, the bones were scrubbed and you were given them back on strings to wear home.



Watch the Food video, featuring photography by Robert Frank, here on ubu web.

The Piccadilly Community Centre

Housing a money-lending booth, prayer room, canteen, bar, computer room and a charity shop with a Conservative Party desk the daily activities of the Piccadilly Community Centre are vast.

Taking place in a space normally occupied by Hauser & Wirth Galleries London 'HQ', the 'community center' is a project designed by artist Christoph Buchel as a comment on David Cameron's 'Big Society'. Totally immersive and operational, the temporary community space cultivates an area for genuine charitable effort and sincere community ideas, despite the fact it occupies only two months of the commercial galleries programming.

Both totally real and a constructed fiction Buchel asks questions about arts socio-political and financial placement.