The Packet Agency
For as long as there has existed a concept of the ‘white cube’ art gallery as a neutral zone for contemplation, there has been a proportionate struggle to re-activate it. The question of how art might transcend this neutrality which was generated for it is rife with stumbling blocks. The crucial aspect of ‘The Packet Agency’s’ extension of this struggle lay in its relaxed approach, its understanding of the gallery not as a site to be rejected and reconfigured so much as activated.
Rather than an exhibition with a beginning and an end, ‘The Packet Agency’ was more of a convergence over distances, something akin to an avian migration pattern. In each instance of the project, twenty artists from different parts of the world were asked to produce an artwork which would fit into a modest envelope, and send it to the gallery by a specified date. At the opening, the envelopes were placed on a table in the centre of the room and those in attendance were asked to open them and install the work.
Each artwork, once conceived of, made and packaged, followed a geographical trajectory via truck, ship, plane, foot; a series of curves, lines, acute and obtuse angles, brakings and accelerations. Once in the space, the works followed a different sort of path, of decision and actualisation, culminating in arrangement, placement, contemplation and discussion by those who installed them and those who came later. With works coming from Japan, the United States, England, Kenya, Germany, Italy, Australia and Canada, the ideas, though diverse, were all conceived with a knowledge that they would travel around the globe to be arranged and presented by strangers in a largely