Art Week Exeter, 9-15 May
One aim of Art Week Exeter was to bring creative engagement to the streets and non-art spaces of the city. It included: Jimmy Cauty's Aftermath Dislocation Principle: a 40-foot shipping container with peep-holes to view a vast dystopian post-riot mulitimedia landscape [1:87 model], which is touring sites of riots all round Britain, and an affordable Art Vending Machine sited in the Bike Shed Theatre. I was very pleased to support and participate in this project to popularise affordable art. This was a perfect opportunity to distribute my symbols of resistance and a useful experience of making multiples: 25 ceramic tiles and small photobooks in 25 packages.
Art Week Exeter also included the Museum of Contemporary Commodities, an art and social science collaboration investigating how we value the stuff we buy. It consisted of both shop front and online platforms featuring a full programme of activities, including a hacked high tech doll acting as guide and answering questions concerning the interconnected world of commodity cultures. A further highlight was a series of new and recent video installations, The Weight of the World, presented by one of Ireland's leading contemporary artists, Sean Lynch who represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Jill Laudet
