How to deal with this project? Structures of Necessity was delicately attuned to the individuality of each participant and steadfastly determined to evade the crude, over-familiar forms of decision-making in the contemporary art world. Yet the project, which originated from an idea by Liz Coats, was motivated by the (correct) perception that access to the benefits of power is essential for artistic practice. In such a circumstance the operation of critical speech tends to be inhibited. One is involved in an embarrassing paradox: in pointing to the operation of powers unwanted and disowned but employed nevertheless, and necessarily so.
Structures of Necessity, subtitled "an exhibition in two parts", presented thirteen people of diverse occupations and passionate commitments, including, unusually, a writer not the author of the catalogue, a marine biologist and a social historian, as well as a divergent group of artists. Each participant chose the work exhibited and contributed a text to the catalogue edited by Liz Coats.
To my way of thinking, Structures of Necessity severely tested current critical responses in Sydney (including my own, of course). As a group exhibition by women it embraced the inevitable risk of description as "ghettoising" art by women; was categorised by some quarters as a "seventies" show for its nonhierarchical and participatory ethos; and was dismissed by others for its eclectic mix ("the works didn't go together"); and insouciant indifference to certain currently fashionable modes. With the exception of this piece, the published record of recent art events remains completely innocent of reference to Structures of Necessity, as telling an indicator of contemporary critical valuation as any available. (Not even damned by faint praise!)
More positively, Structures of Necessity offered, as
Christine Cornish, Untitled Sequence, 1987.
