FEATURE GOSHKA MACUGA
work in her old flat in Hackney. Art display nestled or collided with the negotiate a world where identity is constructed from ever-shifting
trappings of domestic life: “There were layers of work. I became very external elements; Macuga’s temporary ‘total environments’ embrace
interested in these relationships, to the extent that I really wanted to this situation, revealing the rich possibilities of meaning to be found in
push these boundaries quite far.” For her first show, The Mountain and highly individualised interpretation and a freedom of ideas.
the Valley, at London’s Cubitt Gallery in 1999, she took other people’s For Macuga’s Art Now show at Tate Britain this June, she is
unwanted artworks and displayed them over a construction of chairs expanding upon the research begun for the Liverpool Biennial, into
and white sheets. She recalls that “it was very interesting to observe the life of Nash, whose interest in the potential for objects to signify
how people looked at the work, because they would try to work out meaning alien to their actual form strikes an obvious chord. At the time
relationships. Something that was quite insignificant by itself, in relation of writing she is burying herself deep in Tate’s archives, absorbed in
to this accumulation of objects started having a certain significance or the correspondence of Unit One, the artist group Nash co-founded,
a different meaning.” and assembling work and ephemera along the fault lines of personal
Furthermore, in confusing the perceived boundaries of art, relationships.
research material and general bits and bobs, she upsets all sorts of As Macuga enthusiastically relates, anything from a letter or a
preconceptions about the role of the artist, curator or archivist. Tackling book bearing doodles or notes in the margins opens a gateway into
how art is seen, what is shown and what qualifies as art in the first place “being in somebody’s head and really following somebody’s feelings”.
are pressing issues for artists of her generation. From Jeremy Deller’s The pickings are rich: apart from his wife, Margaret, figures oscillating in
folk art archive to Per Hüttner’s I Am a Curator (2003) – dubbed ‘an Nash’s orbit included Eileen Agar, the surrealist with whom he had an
experiment in democratising the curatorial process’ – questions of affair, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Bernard Meninsky. When
art’s cultural context, accessibility and framing are pertinent. Macuga using material of such an intimate nature, the question of authorship
approaches the problematic by creating her own space, a sort of seems especially pertinent. “There has to be some kind of ambiguity
gallery within the gallery, where historical artefacts are brought into a in the way that I use it,” she reflects. “It can’t be too didactic. I have to
contemporary art context and given new meaning – poetic rather than create areas of the unknown.” In addition to these challenges, the issue
academic. History ceases to be a linear construction and becomes of copyright and the protocols of lending have also come to bear, more
more like a Möbius strip. Anything can happen. than ever now that she is working in a major museum. Whatever form
In Sleep of Ulro, the theme of somnambulism was explored the Art Now show takes, Macuga’s highly personal approach to how we
not only in architectural references to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari respond to art display is likely to work some subjective magic around
but through objects that would ordinarily be separated by time and the house of institutional art law.
conception. Works by canonical artists such as Nash and L.S. Lowry,
or by contemporaries of Macuga, such as Dr Lakra and Melvin Moti,
were assembled alongside archived manuscripts in what was more Goshka Macuga: Art Now will be on show at Tate Britain, London, from
three-dimensional collage than themed exhibition. We must all 23 June to 17 August
six.linfive.lin ARTREVIEW
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