The missing nub of Nexus

Something interesting happened during the course of preparing for Nexus, an exhibition exploring artists’ networks. The four artists who were invited to originate the event – myself, Felicity Shillingford, Francis Ives and Volkhardt Mueller – moved from a genuine attempt at planning and collaboration, to a realisation of its impossibility, to an acceptance of chaos … Out of which emerged a surprisingly polite exhibition.

Nexus has so far been an amazing experience: a chance to work with new colleagues and to exhibit in a high-profile public gallery with the support of a curator, a technician, an education officer, a publicity person, a well-equipped workshop and a well-stocked bar ... all the things that just aren’t there when you’re doing the artist-led thing.

It’s terribly tempting to pat myself on the back and say the exhibition looks really good. It does look good. But that isn’t the whole story.

We set out to create something that wasn’t a traditional group show, and which explored some of the social issues surrounding artistic practice. What’s missing from this show, I’d say, is any concrete sense of the way artists work together or with an institution – from mutual support and sustenance to exploitation and competition. They were all enacted during the preparation and installation, but little has been captured for the audience in the show itself.