a vacant bazaar (provisional legend)
A Vacant Bazaar (provisional legend) by Melbourne-based artist Christian Capurro, explores the erasure of nine lifestyle/fashion magazines from the mid-1990s. The meticulous process of hand erasing images and text from Marie Claire, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar was completed by the artist over the last decade.
This process of erasure has been implemented in a further work by Capurro entitled Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette (1999–2007), and it influenced the creation of the works-on-paper series, Compress, (2001–ongoing). Presented at the 2007 Venice Biennale Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette explored the erasure process through a five year collaboration involving the artist’s friends and colleagues, who each erased a page from a men’s fashion magazine and then suggested a price for their labour. In each of these works, Capurro has investigated the notion of artistic process via visibility and subtraction, each work unravelling or dissolving the original material form and structure of the magazine.
The installation of A Vacant Bazaar (provisional legend) at Artspace explored the spatial relationship between each magazine and its erased remnants. A shared cosmetics advertisement linked all but one of the magazines, alongside the remains of the page numbers and most of the magazine covers. Entering the exhibition, the focus on process was immediately evident, as the erased magazines were carefully displayed on constructed tables and ledges. The meticulously arranged fragments of ink and rubber erasing accompanied their respective magazine, displayed according to page number.
The precision and fragility of the erased magazine fragments suggested an unusual collection, more than a strictly curated exhibition. The obsessive nature of the process also made for a visually striking installation. We could not but wonder how exactly