Impractical proposal. Unrealised Potential opens at Cornerhouse.

Matt Hull finds the Cornerhouse galleries humming with artistic potential as a new group exhibition – featuring among others Simon Patterson and Liam Gillick – opens this weekend

A lamp that casts no shadow; an intercontinental exchange programme for statues of national heroes; instructions on how to make a sculpture from a sheet of paper – the rights to these ideas could be yours for only a small fee if a new exhibition at Cornerhouse is anything to go by.

Unrealised Potential, which opens tomorrow, is an ambitious show that spans all three of the Cornerhouse galleries and which, according to artist and lead curator, Mike Chavez-Dawson, ‘looks at the relationship between the artist, curator and audience, the creative dynamic that exists between these entities but also the slippage between these roles.’

‘It is a collective project,’ he stresses. ‘The work of each artist and curator who features in the show is completely vital, and although we may not always approach things in exactly the same way, there is a commonality that runs throughout the exhibition. We’re all singing from the same song sheet, if you like, just at different pitches to one another.’

The show’s first section, Unrealised Potential, consists of a collection of unfulfilled proposals from a range of artists, all of which are on public sale. As part of the deal, buyers have to promise to realize their purchased project in some form within two years – and that’s easier said than done as some clearly require either a few million pounds or bending the laws of physics to execute. ‘Some of them are improbable, to say the least,’ admits Chavez-Dawson. ‘Tom Morton’s proposal, for example, involves hiding Constable landscapes in the countryside where they were originally painted. The likelihood of getting galleries, trusts and insurers to okay something like that is probably quite slim but, crucially, not impossible. The whole thing is really up to the ingenuity of the purchaser to think “I see this as a challenge. How can I interpret this idea?”’

One such idea, Liam Gillick’s Planta De Anodizado, is on show in Gallery 2. The original proposal, which suggested the gallery exhibit products made by the Mexican anodising company LGD LUCK SA, has since been adapted by artists Brain Reed and Len Horsey. The two have chosen to present the proposal as a mock pavilion at a fictionalised Mexican tradeshow, complete with glamorous smiling models and background bossa-nova muzak (watch their exhibition trailer, below, to get a flavour of the work). Chavez-Dawson explains that although the interpretation of the idea was the artists’ own, the pair decided to use the aesthetic of Gillick’s earlier work in industrially finished block colour as a visual touchstone for the piece, so that ‘even though Liam has given the idea over, there is something of him left behind on the project, a sort of carry-over that blurs the lines of authorship and ownership.’

‘There’s a neat connection there to Gallery 3,’ says Chavez-Dawson, ‘which looks at ideas of transaction and ownership touched on in the first two galleries.’ Here, in the third and final gallery space, Gavin Wade asks the question ‘What is wealth?’ (number 28 of R. Buckminster Fuller‘s 40 Strategic Questions that artist and curator try to address). Commissioned by Zurich-based art group Relax, Wade’s work is a sort of informational trading post where visitors can view collected art books, videos and other publications – but only if they are prepared to hand over a valuable item in exchange. For the length of time they spend viewing enlightening material, the visitor’s shoes, wallets or phones will be put on public display, in turn forming part of the installation as objects of wealth.

Entry to Unrealised Potential may be free, but once you’ve been inspired to buy the intellectual rights to Harry Hill’s proposal to remake George Cruikshank’s The Worship of Bacchus (using images of alcoholic celebrities), handed over your wallet in order to spend time leafing through a glossy book of prints, or even just tried to do the maths with artists’ proposals that will never, thanks to their prohibitive cost or sheer impracticality, see the light of day again, this is one exhibition that could well cost more than you’d bargained for.

Unrealised Potential runs at Cornerhouse from 17 July (until 12 September). Free entry. Below: Planta de Anodizado: an art trailer by Len Horsey and Brian Reed, plus our exclusive interview with the artists (plus curator Mike Chavez-Dawson).

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