Matthew Darbyshire: An Exhibition for Modern Living at Manchester Art Gallery

"This major exhibition by British contemporary artist Matthew Darbyshire is the artist’s largest solo public exhibition to date and includes ten of his large-scale environments from the last decade, as well as new sculptural works for the Gallery’s grand 19th century entrance hall.

Darbyshire’s work critically examines the language of design, sculpture and our relationship to lived environments. The artist explores the concept of collecting, not only in terms of an institutional critique, but also the way we amass objects for the home, shop or office and what these objects say about us. These ideas are explored in Darbyshire’s work that gives the exhibition its title, An Exhibition for Modern Living (2011). A highlight of British Art Show 7, this work is inspired by the landmark 1949 exhibition of the same name at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The 1949 exhibition collected the best of modern ‘design for living’ in the context of the rapidly changing society of post-Second World War America. The show set an example of how design could be made available for the masses and achieved legendary status due to the site-specific custom room installations. At Manchester Art Gallery, Darbyshire will present a contemporary equivalent that is somewhat more anxious than the 1949 exhibition, presenting an environment packed with objects varying from valuable collectors’ pieces and handmade sculptures to readily available high street items. The work succinctly questions the political and economic agendas that inform our taste and value judgements today.



While the work An Exhibition for Modern Living examines the nature of how and why individuals collect, Oak Effect (2012) addresses how museums and galleries acquire artworks. For this piece, Darbyshire displays original wooden objects in a room made from contemporary pieces of flat-pack furniture. The artist has re-worked this installation with curators and conservators at the gallery to present a diverse range of hand-made artefacts fashioned from natural wood from the city’s collections, challenging us to think about the provenance and display of our collections in a very different way.

More recently, Darbyshire has begun to explore industrial prototyping and 3D digital printing to create sculptures using pristine white polystyrene for his Bureau series (2014). The artist has subsequently built on this research and techniques developed to recreate classical and contemporary sculptural forms from layers of hand-cut, multi-coloured polycarbonate as part of a series entitled CAPTCHA. Two sculptures have been created specifically for the exhibition as part of this series, which will be positioned in Manchester Art Gallery’s impressive Doric entrance hall.Doryphoros and Dyson will take the place of traditional bronze and marble figurative sculpture on either side of the grand stone staircase, set against the backdrop of casts from the Parthenon frieze given by George IV to decorate Manchester’s very own temple to culture."






http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/exhibition/matthew-darbyshire-an-exhibition-for-modern-living/

Matthew Darbyshire: An Exhibition for Modern Living at Manchester Art Gallery

This major exhibition by British contemporary artist Matthew Darbyshire is the artist’s largest solo public exhibition to date and will include ten of his large-scale environments from the last decade, as well as new sculptural works for the Gallery’s grand 19th century entrance hall.

My joined 2

Darbyshire’s work critically examines the language of design, sculpture and our relationship to lived environments. The artist explores the concept of collecting, not only in terms of an institutional critique, but also the way we amass objects for the home, shop or office and what these objects say about us. These ideas are explored in Darbyshire’s work that gives the exhibition its title, An Exhibition for Modern Living(2011). A highlight of British Art Show 7, this work is inspired by the landmark 1949 exhibition of the same name at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The 1949 exhibition collected the best of modern ‘design for living’ in the context of the rapidly changing society of post-Second World War America. The show set an example of how design could be made available for the masses and achieved legendary status due to the site-specific custom room installations. At Manchester Art Gallery, Darbyshire will present a contemporary equivalent that is somewhat more anxious than the 1949 exhibition, presenting an environment packed with objects varying from valuable collectors’ pieces and handmade sculptures to readily available high street items. The work succinctly questions the political and economic agendas that inform our taste and value judgements today.

Standardised Production Clothing - Version 7

While the work An Exhibition for Modern Living examines the nature of how and why individuals collect, Oak Effect (2012) addresses how museums and galleries acquire artworks. For this piece, Darbyshire displays original wooden objects in a room made from contemporary pieces of flat-pack furniture. The artist has re-worked this installation with curators and conservators at the gallery to present a diverse range of hand-made artefacts fashioned from natural wood from the city’s collections, challenging us to think about the provenance and display of our collections in a very different way.

Dyson5

More recently, Darbyshire has begun to explore industrial prototyping and 3D digital printing to create sculptures using pristine white polystyrene for his Bureau series (2014). The artist has subsequently built on this research and techniques developed to recreate classical and contemporary sculptural forms from layers of hand-cut, multi-coloured polycarbonate as part of a series entitled CAPTCHA. A sculpture from Darbyshire’s CAPTCHA series is currently a highlight of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Two sculptures have been created specifically for the exhibition as part of this series, which will be positioned in Manchester Art Gallery’s impressive Doric entrance hall.Doryphoros and Dyson will take the place of traditional bronze and marble figurative sculpture on either side of the grand stone staircase, set against the backdrop of casts from the Parthenon frieze given by George IV to decorate Manchester’s very own temple to culture.


http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/exhibition/matthew-darbyshire-an-exhibition-for-modern-living/


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Do It 2013 at Manchester Art Gallery

The strong smell pervading the whole of the gallery came from the gallery staff who were carrying out Rirkrit Tiravanija's instructions to make Thai curry paste.

Not quite sure whether or not the visitor could help with the chopping of the onion or grating of the ginger, and not being able to enjoy the curry paste produced in the gallery, I felt like I was only getting half an experience, and given the simplistic nature of the recipe, felt that reading the instructions alone would have done the job. Then again, it did smell good!

Another instruction, to create a grid on the floor (squares could be of any size) and place one red object in each of the squares., lost its impact due to the size of the grid. Rather than the whole room being gridded and filled with red objects, the artwork was confined to one corner of the large room.

Whereas these instructions had been performed by the gallery staff, some of the artworks such as Yoko Ono's uninspired wishing tree required audience participation. Similarly, another artwork instructed the viewer to take one of the shoe boxes from the pile in the gallery, fill it with objects of significance and then return to the gallery, placing it back on the pile. Unfortunately, as with the majority of other artworks that encouraged viewer participation, the outcome resembled nothing more than a pile of rubbish; graffitied boxes filled with a few exhibition leaflets, tissues and sweet wrappers.

I found the half-hearted attempts to follow the instructions an unnecessary and frustrating part of the exhibition and would rather have imagined the outcome having seen the written instructions.