The new programme of commissions for Edition V – Appropriation and Dedication has commenced in the production of new works, as well as extending relationships with various components of If I Can’t Dance’s activities. At the Biennale de Lyon (12 September – 5 January 2013) and Frieze London (17 – 20 October) presentations of the ongoing work of commissioned artist
Gerry Bibby will be on show.
In a re-appropriative turn, Bibby has installed himself as a shifting functionary within the ongoing ‘backstage’ operations of If I Can’t Dance. As a grounds to his writing project, Bibby has been touring with particular If I Can’t Dance programmes as a production assistant, for instance—writing through the organization’s functional layers. Continuing his parasitic and clandestine insertions, Bibby is presenting a work at Frieze London accompanied by a written component and a one-day performance programme. The performance programme, produced in collaboration with If I Can’t Dance and with guest Adrian Rifkin, will be held on October 19th from 3.15pm.
Inspired by finding shards of oyster shells in the soil of Regent’s Park,
Gerry Bibby’s installation and performance unpacks the labour and exchange processes surrounding the history of oysters in London. Deferring the immediacy of a ‘performance’, Oysters will be served to Fair-workers during the Frieze build-up. The left-over shells will be washed and treated by the artist, re-presented as a post-hoc deposit of performative fragments. The work re-purposes Bibby’s own prior experience as a Fair-worker; in particular a task in which he was required to dig a series of holes in Queen’s Park. In upending mounds of dirt peppered with Oyster-shell fragments, Bibby discovered the shells to be of the now-extinct Thames Oyster which had been a readily available food-source for laborers migrating to the city of London during the Industrial Revolution.
Gerry Bibby's presentations at Frieze London and the Biennale de Lyon will each inform a forthcoming book of fiction, to be launched as part of a final Edition V programme of commissions in late 2014. This programme will also include new works by commissioned artists Snejanka Mihalyova,
Emily Roysdon and
Sara van der Heide.
