‘The moment the criterion of authenticity in art breaks down, the entire function of art is transformed. Its basis in ritual is replaced by a basis in another area of practice, namely, politics’1
Rainer Crone (Edited by Gilda Williams, On & By Andy Warhol, MIT Press, 2016 ) p111
It is at the surfaces of commodity capitalism that the authentic is constructed in a process that conceals the very labour required to do so.
The surface is an abstraction but can also be understood as a screen of projection, the primary site of experiential consumption in commodity capitalism. The surface therefore matters and is not without qualities, the surface is depth. The surface is the site of distinction and authenticity legible at a glance. It is a competition, the site of a war waged in the name of visibility and credibility. The surface is also an abstraction, a screen directed and dedicated towards the consumer and commodity circulation. Every surface communicates.
It is at the surfaces of commodity capitalism that glamour weaves, very closely together, both aesthetics and economics as part of its central role in the logic of commodity capitalism.
This brief, dynamic show brings together work that shows rather than tells and that is an exercise in the politics of superficial authenticity, in an attempt to forge potential affective connections and entanglements between the works of Hilary Lloyd, Jemima Stehli, Hamish Morrow and August Stehli Russell, as a means of foregrounding the politics embedded in the surfaces that each artist makes.
