HANGBANG (nightshift)

All artworks made by the artist from1996-2010, not held in public or private collections, dimensions variable, 2010

HANGBANG (nightshift) is an installation made up of the artist’s artworks not currently in public or private collections.  Hundreds of diverse objects – the artist’s archive – were stored, numbered and displayed around the gallery periphery as a massive assemblage. The daily on-site and online business of the institution – office staff, technologies and visitors – were recorded and employed to select specific works for a nightly interference/vention.

Viewed live from 9pm-5am via a window punched into the gallery external wall, this regular nocturnal operation translated a dormant archive of objects into a volatile, vital and transient network of interactions.

Via a suite of diverse ‘damage’ scenarios, HANGBANG (nightshift) toyed with established ideas of art and contact; challenging the ‘do not touch’ of artworks in the gallery, the ‘do not touch’ (don’t mess with me) of the institution, and the implicit ‘do not touch’ of tradition.

HANGBANG (nightshift) also forced the institution into a rhetorical closed loop, where staff operated ‘on behalf’ of the exhibition, whilst simultaneously altering the state of the installation via their interactions.

Photography by Peter Angus Robinson