‘The Show Before the Show’ encapsulates beginnings that have not yet begun, preempting the initiation of an initiative initiating momentarily, but not immediately, not now.
At a later date ‘Niche Gallery’ will open, but right now it is not open as it is closed to public viewing as we are installing and preparing for it to open.
What is displayed is not an artwork, yet it is decidedly not not art. Suspense oozes from the precarity of the installation, an installation left mid-install, but simultaneously not, as it is already finished. That is to say, the install is a depiction of an install, as in the event where you install an installation, but it is not, in reality, an install, as the installing of this depiction of an install is already complete. “Installed” if you will. Upon reflection, this may have been a snappier title, but unfortunately we have already sent this exhibition text to print.
Duchamp‘s readymades almost certainly hold some relevance here, but I’m not going to art school until September so I will have to let you know. The objects were already made before we got our hands on them, that’s certainly true, but they were more answerable to the law of gravity back then.
The objects have, via their placement, altered our understanding of concepts like “wall” and “floor” and “ceiling”, coalescing those meanings until we realise that those distinctions are arbitrary, unhelpful and overly strict. Perhaps we should think about walls and floors and ceilings in a Venn Diagram, where the overlaps form the largest part of the diagram. Perhaps we don’t need walls and floors and ceilings, perhaps we should all live outside. Ultimately, this installation that is not an installation in the arty sense, questions why we allow ‘Gravity’ in general to control our lives in such an all encompassing way.
This gallery isn’t opening now, and there isn’t artwork displayed yet, so you had better come back later.
'The Show Before the Show' was an installation in Niche Gallery, Southampton.
