Unnamed Collaboration at Waterside Project Space

Marsha Bradfield, Ben Coode-Adams, Tanya Cottingham, Jane Hoodless, Phil Hurt, Josh Love, Douglas Nicolson, Pierre d’Alancaisez

Unnamed Collaboration began in October 2008 and proposed to explore collaborative art practice in both its limitations and its ability to expand individual practice by posing the question, ‘Can a group of artists work together?’

Rather than simply relying on the familiar methods of collaboration, and avoiding projects like group happenings, the artists involved aimed to explore alternative avenues for engaging the audience directly rather than allowing them to become unwitting participants in an inaccessible dialogue. The artists were paired together for a period of two months, each period of collaboration ending with an event in the form of an exhibition and public critique session. The artists involved began their work in pairs, with the goal of producing an open forum every two months. Every new collaboration would involve more artists until the culmination of the project whereby the whole Unnamed Collaboration together produced a single exhibition in April 2010.

Through this marriage of two vastly different camps of thought regarding contemporary practice, Unnamed Collaboration sought to transgress the traditional methods of collaboration. The recent emergence of collaborative practice as ‘participatory art’ has led to an increasing reliance on the process rather than the result; primacy is given to discourse rather than an object. The collaborators end up as participants, their only distinction being their authorship of the project. Through this project, Unnamed Collaboration aimed to comfortably separate the participants and the audience member by producing that with which the audience can engage: an art object. While the internal and external discursive elements of the project still retained significant importance for the expansion of the practice, Unnamed Collaboration’s approach to the concept of collaboration did not use process as justification of its own artistic merit.

Unnamed Collaboration began as an experiment in pushing the boundaries of artistic collaboration, to push artists to produce objects as well as discourse around participation. The goal of the project ultimately ran unfulfilled as the collaboration began to rely more heavily on the discussion rather than the production of the final exhibition.

a conversation that's potentially only interesting to three people...
video installation on television screen, 5'58", looped, audio.
Josh Love (in collaboration with Pierre d'Alancaisez and Marsha Bradfield)

Untitled
video projection with audio, looped
Marsha Bradfield (in collaboration with Pierre d'Alancaisez and Josh Love)

Untitled
Rolodex card files, electric motor, wood.
Pierre d'Alancaisez (in collaboration with Marsha Bradfield and Josh Love)

Untitled
Photographs, printed text, drawings
Phil Hurt and Douglas Nicolson

How to Trim a Toenail
video on laptop, looped, performance
Marsha Bradfield and Tanya Cottingham

that's all we have time for
16mm film, steel canister, 20x25x3cm
Pierre d'Alancaisez and Josh Love