Simple Math
Between 1993 and 2000 I frequented openings and events at CBD Gallery (called Project 11 in its final year), an artist run space in Sydney’s central business district. The gallery was the focus of a busy social scene and featured a rapid turnover of exhibitions, performances and other events. It was initiated and run primarily by David M. Thomas, an artist residing in the rooms above the gallery. Thomas’s genuine interest in art and ideas provided a conceptual framework for the development of a multitude of artists' practices, while his presence and sense of professionalism influenced the network that formed around his project.
When Thomas closed the gallery and moved to Brisbane, a sense of social connectivity remained even within his solo projects, where he collaborates with others in creating videos, installations, compositions and performances. While the collaborative nature of his practice contributes to its material output, the underlying connections informing it are based on authentic and ongoing friendships. Collaboration, discussion and physical presence seem essential to Thomas’s ability to function as an artist, and art as activity or concept underlies and informs his relationships.
Art practice has traditionally been accompanied by a sense of the social, with the events and activities of various artists’ groups historically influencing their work and its concepts. In the late 1990s, Nicolas Bourriaud’s formalisation of art as communal event or network via his label ‘relational aesthetics’ tended to abstract the meaning and significance of art in life, compromising the concept’s authenticity. The issues involved in escaping such formalisation, or in fostering a real sense of art in life, are relevant to considerations of Thomas’s recent exhibition Simple Math at Knulp, an artist run space