Artist Una Walker spent 128 days, approximately 1,280 hours, producing an inventory of art exhibitions in Belfast from March 1968 to March 2001. The chronology, presented on gallery walls, and as a searchable database in an office, attempts to document the length, type, title, venue and media source of every artist’s show. Surveiller is ‘just a list’, but like many things that are ‘just lists’ it creates and communicates power structures and opposes the experience of those ‘who were there at the time’ with larger and longer patterns.

The database presents fact: when, where, what and who. It does not distinguish the art listed according to quality, content or reputation, nor does it provide any visual information. We expect art to be emotive and subjective, so to subject art to this analysis seems stark and reductive. However the tension between objective and subjective, or observer and subject, is inherent in surveillance, and, like all good data collection, this inventory reveals much. The information presents art as a type of social activity, subject to the influence of politics and economics. For example, in 1974 there was notably fewer exhibitions. The list shows there were only five active galleries, others being decommissioned through bombing. In contrast, in 1994, the year of the cease-fire, galleries were busy. The increase in galleries and shows in the recent years is notable, reflecting the growing faith in culture as a tool for economic regeneration. Many new commercial galleries have opened, evidence of the greater spending power of the culturally literate.

…

It might seem that Walker is performing a generous service for her fellow artists, placing them in official histories where they were previously invisible. However, the aim of Surveiller isn’t to valorise individuals but to reveal the mechanisms which make practices visible and effective. The list is as accurate as possible, but it relies on the very media sources it also represents, amplifying any effects of misinformation. It is noticeable that none of Walker’s information sources are from outside Ireland. It seems that scanning the UK or international art press during this period was pointless as so little about art in Ireland was published. The sheer mass of internal artistic circulation in Belfast during this period is overwhelming and the person who surveys this information can’t help but wonder what return any of them received from their work.

In Surveiller Walker is an amasser of information and a controller of data. Far from being atavistic, Surveiller gives Walker a position of power to represent her colleagues and reduce them to data. The time period presented here is a time of surveillance and controlled media representation. Surveiller reflects this oppression by turning inwards and broadcasting these mechanisms. The artist makes her work out of watching and recording artists, the gallery makes its exhibition out of recording exhibitions and the viewer watches themselves surveying the data.

Sounds fabulous, no? If you do happen to be in Liverpool, the show opens this Thursday at Static, 23 Roscoe Lane.

Titled 11 paragraphs: A brief exploration of the Liverpool Biennial Press Release, the document - after a nice reference to ‘the new tertiary level of rehashed, reproduced internet wordage’ - considers the press response to the Biennial, noting that 70% of headlines garnered focus on Yoko Ono’s contributions, matching her pole position in the first paragraph of the previous press release, with the remainder of the coverage tackling Jarvis Cocker’s curation, and other projects given second billing first time around.

Then it gets really good:

Clichés aside, are we therefore to conclude from these brief observations that the amount of column space per Biennial strand directly equates to the selected information given in the official Press Release?

…There is also the accusation that the press had pretty much written their reviews before even arriving in Liverpool. This is an area that Press Corps will be investigating more fully over the coming month but it is clear that many of the broadsheets have not only followed the template of the 2004 Press Release, but they have also shadowed each others articles, counteracting or agreeing with certain observations or stereotypes, or even jostling their egos a little as many of them actually suggest that they indeed should be on the next John Moores jury.

…Therefore, on one level it shows the power and directness of the Press Release to get to where it needs to go in order for the issues contained within it to be circulated widely, irrespective of whether those issues are out of context, or of the opinion of the organisation who sends it, rather than the opinion of the artists that it purportedly represents. In some ways, it could be argued that the journalist is the instrument of distribution, the thing that sits in-between the press officer and the public they seek to reach. On another level, it demonstrates that if the press follow the key indicators of the Press Release without subsequent interrogation, they are not necessarily being critical of the work on show but are in effect responding to the propositions and sentiment contained within the text, a complaint that has been aired widely especially by artists and organisers during both the 2002 and the 2004 Biennials.

Wow! I’m not sure if Press Corps, the folk behind the release, are quite, quite mad in sending this out to the very people they take a pop at in the course of their meta-release, or bloody geniuses.

Either way, I’ve long wanted to curate a show featuring a display of press releases (with small works of art sent out to publicise it, naturally) becuase, as Press Corps point out, they’re so often a readymade source of critical appraisal and a lazily adopted route to understanding; and so often have a far greater impact on a show’s reception than - gasp! - the work itself.

If I ever find anyone daft enough to give me space to mount such a show, one thing’s sure: 11 paragraphs: A brief exploration of the Liverpool Biennial Press Release will be the centrepiece, one of a tiny number of these missives that rises to the level of being an interesting text-based work in its own right, which, of course, questions the conceit behind exhibiting press releases in a gallery space in the first place.