By Ellen Mara De Wachter
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Opening of 'fig-2', ICA, London. All photographs: Sylvain Deleu
‘What’s your innermost desire? What would you like to do, but haven’t had the chance to, because of your current conditions?’ This is the question London-based Turkish curator Fatoş Üstek will be putting to the artists she invites to take up the 50 slots that make up ‘fig-2’. The yearlong series of shows launched last Monday at the ICA with 1/50, an exhibition by British artist Laura Eldret. The ICA was packed with Londoners emerging from the haze of festive excess. Sucking gin and tonics out of plastic bags in the style of Mexican ‘jugo’ helped thaw out the cold, as we squeezed into the ICA Theatre for a party and a performance by Anat Ben David. ‘fig-2’, as its name would suggest, is a follow-up to ‘fig-1’, a project by Mark Francis and Jay Jopling realised in 2000, which enjoys a quasi-mythical status. But one needn’t have experienced the original to grasp the potential held by its simple premise: Üstek first heard of it in June 2014, and by mid-October, she had been appointed as its curator. In keeping with the improvisatory nature of ‘fig-1’, she has about 20 artists in place and plans to program the rest as she goes along, although her list is confidential, with artists announced on the Wednesday preceding their show via an email newsletter.
January 2000 feels like a bygone era: London was pre-Tate Modern, pre-Frieze Art Fair, and popular perception of contemporary art was dominated by tabloid coverage of YBA antics. ‘fig-1’ took place at Fragile House in Soho, a building recently demolished to make way for Crossrail, the new train line currently boring through London’s underground. Its simple rules (an exhibition per week, with an opening reception every Monday night) liberated participants from institutional pressures and Francis’s curatorial light touch allowed artists at various stages in their careers to take risks with relatively low stakes. The relay race of exhibitions included shows by then established artists such as Richard Deacon and Gilbert & George, as well as younger artists who are now well known, including Jeremy Deller, Grayson Perry and Wolfgang Tillmans. The multi-disciplinary roster of exhibitors also included Will Self, Patti Smith and milliner Philip Treacy. ‘fig-1’ lore makes much of the neighbouring pub’s roaring Monday night trade, and alumni fondly describe the openings as fertile ground for later collaborations. It was a ‘fixed cultural meeting point that started the week’, according to Darren Almond (47/50).
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The ‘fig-2’ team, from left to right: Irene Altaió, Ben Wadler, Fatoş Üstek, Jessica Temple
All this seems good enough reason for the current revival of the project, 15 years later, especially in a city whose changing demographic and art scene of which are bound to yield something quite different. An exhibition like ‘fig-2’ inevitably doubles as a survey of the status quo. In her curatorial statement, which has the affirmative flavour of a Deleuzian manifesto, Üstek likens ‘fig-2’ to a body produced by ‘knowledge accumulation’. Art is ‘an object of encounter, as opposed to an object of recognition’, and Üstek makes clear her intention for ‘fig-2’ to foster the production of new discourse and trans-disciplinarity. Üstek’s international outlook – she comes from Turkey, was an Associate Curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea last year and has worked in several European countries – reflects an increasingly diverse London. In the time since ‘fig-1’, the expansion of the European Union, which allows the free movement of persons between member states, in addition to immigration from further afield, with people seeking economic and social opportunities or fleeing global turmoil, have significantly affected the demographics of the city. The last census in 2011 showed that the White British population of London went down from 60% in 2001 to 45% in 2011 with White Other, Asian and Black populations making up the difference.
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Anat Ben-David performance at ‘fig-2’ launch party, ICA, London
The landscape of the arts has also changed in that time, including the growth of private philanthropy, which has been the enabling force for ‘fig-2’. ‘fig-1’ was initiated by Francis and Jopling, and sponsored by Bloomberg, while ‘fig-2’ was initiated and sponsored by Outset Contemporary Art Fund, an independent philanthropic organisation funded by private and corporate supporters. Outset’s support means that Üstek won’t have to do any fundraising, an rare privilege at a time when it’s increasingly common for curators to be responsible for securing the funds that enable them to do their jobs. Overall, ‘fig-2’ is a canny collage of funding, with Phillips auction house providing financial support, private patrons paying for a day, week or month of programming, and the Art Fund subsidising Üstek’s post. In an eccentric example of corporate sponsorship, Bicester Village, a luxury brands outlet mall 65 miles out of London, has pledged the use of some of the Village’s quaint New England-style clapboard houses for offsite exhibitions by ‘fig-2’ artists. Outset has also come up with ‘fig-legacy’, a plan to donate works made during the year to public institutions across the UK.
‘fig-2’ will unfold in the ICA Studio, situated at the top of a graffitied concrete staircase off the building’s main entrance. The modest room will have to multitask as a public gallery, performance space and office for Üstek and her team. It will be reconfigured for each show with movable partitions made of basic metal shelving units clad in white board, devised by Universal Design Studio.
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Laura Eldret, 3 | The Juicers (detail), 2015, mixed media, installation view as part of ‘fig-2’. Courtesy: the artist
In 2000, shows by the late Richard Hamilton bookended ‘fig-1’. His 1/50 consisted of an unfinished painting, which he had completed by the time 50/50 rolled around. Following this model, Eldret’s work in progress will return in December as finished piece. In that time, she plans to develop the work she started in Oaxaca State, Mexico last year. Eldret lived in the Zapotec village of Teotitlán del Valle, an indigenous community famous for its woven rugs and communitarian ethos, learning Spanish, drawing and convincing the weavers to abandon their traditional patterns and turn her drawings into rugs. The resulting works are ‘receipts of exchange’, embodying both sides’ engagement in the creative process. Eldret’s 1/50 show included a number of these rugs suspended throughout the room, featuring her imagery of local landscapes, building sites and games, as well as the recurring motif of the plastic bags of *jugo whose flavours were transmuted into dyes of various colours. An observational video played on a laptop showed locals weaving, going about their daily business and compulsory public service, and celebrating the Day of the Dead. Its ambient soundtrack filled the exhibition space, transporting visitors to this idyllic community nestled at the foot of the mountains, in which every house has an active loom. Teotitlán del Valle, whose artistic output is intimately connected to its economic and social practices, looked like a utopian territory, where life is predicated on creativity; a bit like the place one imagines ‘fig-2’ will grow into over the next 12 months.
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