Apartment x THEFOURTH
2020.09.15–2020.10.31
2020.09.15–2020.10.31
“Curators and artists have historically been highly adaptable and resourceful in discovering and developing new means and contexts to both create work and exhibit it. The Apt Art movement in Moscow in the 1980s for example grew in response to the limitations on public space and creative freedom in the Soviet Union. Artist’s apartments became the primary context in which to view work which fell outside the officially sanctioned, briefly creating an alternative to the dominant cultural narrative.
In 2020 we have experienced an unprecedented upheaval of established business paradigms across all sectors of the economy and society. THEFOURTH and Apartment Vol. are borne of a desire to create a high traffic art marketplace in non-traditional settings such as Instagram as well as in living environments, replacing a traditional gallery space with that of a domestic living environment – the platform allows both a context for art production created during the COVID-19 lockdown stages as well as a commercial mechanism to sustain this production, as the industry adjusts and redefines itselfduring this time.
Given the practical mechanics of the COVID-19 lockdown involving greater time spent in the home – however defined – and a resulting stark division of public and private spaces, an almost logical response is to reposition the site of art engagement and display within this very context. To generate a cultural project that engages with the more confined terrain of the domestic interior produces new ways of reading the city and pragmatic alternatives to showing in established art galleries. Such spaces operationalise and configure notions of memory, identity and security in unique ways, and when repurposed; provide both physical and metaphorical spaces for innovation and reinvention. A net result being a context in which to have conversations across artist, curator and collector axes. Creating a system of cultural production outside of the commercial white cube gallery context, that privileges the inherent collaboration, conversation and cooperation that art production and display requires as well as developing resources to operate within the spatial restrictions of the city.
Living environments remain crucial sites of interrogation of our collective and individual cultural relationships to the daily realities of gender, race, privilege and propriety. The idea of house/home/shelter as both a right and a luxury collide as ambiguous entities grafted to the constant morph of capitalism and technology, commerce and spectacle. Even within the established commercial gallery space, much art – aside from limited institutional acquisition – is made and sold for private, domestic consumption. In collapsing these concepts and contexts the net result is a platform to engage with art in another way and on different terms.”
In 2020 we have experienced an unprecedented upheaval of established business paradigms across all sectors of the economy and society. THEFOURTH and Apartment Vol. are borne of a desire to create a high traffic art marketplace in non-traditional settings such as Instagram as well as in living environments, replacing a traditional gallery space with that of a domestic living environment – the platform allows both a context for art production created during the COVID-19 lockdown stages as well as a commercial mechanism to sustain this production, as the industry adjusts and redefines itselfduring this time.
Given the practical mechanics of the COVID-19 lockdown involving greater time spent in the home – however defined – and a resulting stark division of public and private spaces, an almost logical response is to reposition the site of art engagement and display within this very context. To generate a cultural project that engages with the more confined terrain of the domestic interior produces new ways of reading the city and pragmatic alternatives to showing in established art galleries. Such spaces operationalise and configure notions of memory, identity and security in unique ways, and when repurposed; provide both physical and metaphorical spaces for innovation and reinvention. A net result being a context in which to have conversations across artist, curator and collector axes. Creating a system of cultural production outside of the commercial white cube gallery context, that privileges the inherent collaboration, conversation and cooperation that art production and display requires as well as developing resources to operate within the spatial restrictions of the city.
Living environments remain crucial sites of interrogation of our collective and individual cultural relationships to the daily realities of gender, race, privilege and propriety. The idea of house/home/shelter as both a right and a luxury collide as ambiguous entities grafted to the constant morph of capitalism and technology, commerce and spectacle. Even within the established commercial gallery space, much art – aside from limited institutional acquisition – is made and sold for private, domestic consumption. In collapsing these concepts and contexts the net result is a platform to engage with art in another way and on different terms.”
INSTALLATION
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Stephan Allwright, Hugo Berolsky, Tatenda Chidora, Githan Coopoo, Isabella Cydenius, Mia Darling, Grace de Kroon, Katharien de Villiers, Farai Engelbrecht, Jan Ernst de Wet, Jonathan Freemantle, Jeanne Gaigher, Good Good Boy, Rodan Kane Hart, Mira Jaan, Martine Jackson, Mo Laudi, Givan Lotz, Michael MacGarry, Akshar Meganbeharie, Daniel Malan, Yolanda Mazwana, Johno Mellish, Unathi Mkonto, Nabeeha Mohammed, Gitte Moller, Billy Monk, Anico Mostert, Rosie Mudge, Jody Paulsen, Talia Ramkilawan, Jonah Sack, Benjamin Salvatore, Brett Charles Seiler, Guy Simpson, Shakil Solanki, Marlene Steyn, Sitaara Ren Stodel, Alfred Thoba, Atang Tshikare, Marsi van de Heuvel, Frances van Hasselt, Karlien van Rooyen, Lulama Wolf, Michaela Younge