RITUAL EXCHANGE
Ritual Exchange is an interactive performance work I created over two years during my Masters of Fine Art at National Art School, in addition to a written exegesis by the same name.
This work takes place over two adjacent spaces: the Shrine and the Souvenir Stall. While the Shrine represents the untouchable and unattainable aspects of both spirituality and the art world, the Souvenir Stall sells affordable, portable mementos of the Shrine experience.
The work was exhibited during the Post Graduate Show in 2022, and was activated several times a week.
Ritual Exchange: Stall and Shrine explore economic structures that develop around significant sites of worship, such as shrines and galleries, and the ingrained rituals associated with encountering revered objects. Visitation to the Shrine can be commemorated through the interchange of value between viewer and maker, wherein monetary offerings are made in exchange for physical mementos of the viewing experience.
“The artist-vendor invites the audience to play an active role as consumer-pilgrim during the open times of the Souvenir Stall, where tactile interaction with the work is encouraged, and buying of the work directly from the maker made possible. Here artworks that respond to the Shrine and the Studio are pedalled as Souvenir objects, transgressing the realms of art, artefact, relic, and commodity. While the life of the Shrine is bound by the transient nature of the exhibition, the Souvenirs purchased become durational extensions of the work in the possession of the buyer.”
Investigating the way objects hold and maintain value, both economic and transcendental, began with my initial foray into in-glaze reduction lustres.
One of my first lustre works, “Golden Child” demonstrated the chemical possibilities of glaze and the dual history of ceramics as both sacred artefact and quotidian object. Golden rivers glisten over undulating surfaces while a deep, primordial red emanates from within. Alluring and untouchable, the desire for tactile interaction that will never be met under museum etiquette both maintains value and conceals purpose. Power is borrowed from both place and time: the authority of the gallery, and the obscured narrative that brought it there.
