Click
to download Gavin Wade’s full text Tony
T (Spectator T)
Notes on a curatorial character
I first met Tony T. on Devonshire Green in the Summer
of 2002. Now he lives in my dreams. I met him because
I was making an artwork for Devonshire Green and Tony
didn’t like it. I was installing a series of
5 double sided poster display units across the Green
which had pasted onto them 10 posters outlining top
5s for films, music, art, books and world politics.
Half of the posters were official top 5s from newspapers,
the other half were formed from canvassing people
aged between the ages of 16-24 who hung out on or
passed through the Green. New posters were to be pasted
up every week for an 8 week period. The project was
called Here Are The Young Persons and I was selected
and commissioned by young people in Sheffield to make
the artwork. Tony really did confront me and the artwork
really was smashed to pieces in the middle of the
night. It was a nightmare. It affected the artwork
totally and made me question what it was that the
artwork was doing. I now see the entire episode as
a positive challenge to respond to rather than merely
a negative event.
I got to know Tony better when I named him and created
his history and personality in my upcoming novel,
The Interruptors. Tony is real fiction. He became
a catalyst for imagining how artists should engage
with different situations, opening up the ways we
could and couldn’t deal with people and places.
In some ways he taught me the value of risk and how
important that is for art in any situation.
When I was invited to develop a concept for Art Sheffield
05, Tony wouldn’t get out of my mind. I started
to imagine a biennial exhibition that had a single
character as simultaneously motivating force and ideal
audience. Imagine a Biennial with personality, with
a strong position, clearly stated and relating to
the locality but dealing with a universal concern!
Or, if that sounds just like every other Biennial
event, just imagine a Biennial with a personality!
Tony is not exactly a case study but perhaps he lies
at the heart of current debates around socially engaged
art practices. Even anti-social behaviour is still
social. Even anti-social art or dreaming is still
part of what makes society tick.
Tony doesn’t only hide in my dreams though,
he’s there in those inbetween moments when I’m
awake as well, in between love and cleaning up and
shaving and cooking French toast. He’s just
there waiting to get out, egging me on to find some
action. I didn’t invent him. He’s real.
He raised himself out of my metaphysical doubt. He’s
as real as anybody else, clinging to life with everything
he’s got and more. He’ll soon be in your
dreams too, the angry kid who appears from nowhere.
That’ll be Tony T, the incidental person of
your nightmares and maybe your life. Don’t avoid
him but I would advise you to keep a close eye on
him. You never know what might happen next.
In the Winter of 1982 the artist collective Art &
Language wrote of a Spectator A and B. Spectator A
goes straight to an artwork, waits till he gets the
proper feelings and comprehension and then he just
might look at the title of the artwork, seek information
and confirmation of his experience and understanding.
Spectator B goes immediately to the catalogue and
press release seeking to discover how to read the
artwork. In the Spring of 2000 Artist/Writer Dave
Beech put forward an idea for a Spectator C who isn’t
interested in Art at all and ignores it. Beech suggests
that there may be a whole alphabet of spectators out
there. The alphabet could range from philistines to
serial killers. Tony T falls somewhere in between.
He is Spectator T. He doesn’t ignore Art he
hates it. He feels like it attempts to interfere with
his life. If he wants to do or know something or not
do or know something that’s his business and
Art can go fuck itself. I think Tony’s got a
bad attitude but I think I understand it in some ways!
I also think there is art out there that Tony would
give some time to. Tony T is a challenge to Art Sheffield
05 to come up with the goods. People will take positions
over this. Is it right or wrong to implicate someone
like this in art or to aim an exhibition at a Tony
T? That’s not my job to answer. I’ve got
my own dreams.
Gavin Wade
January 2005
Berlin
Click to download Gavin Wade’s full text Tony
T (Spectator T)
Gavin Wade is an Artist-Curator and ACE Research Fellow in
Curating at the University of Central England. His work has developed from structures
within exhibitions for ‘supporting’ the work of others to a broader
enquiry into responding to and generating new sites for art, resulting in projects
looking at collaboration and the public space. Current projects include Support
Structure Phase 1-6 (with architect Celine Condorelli) (2003-5) which is an
RSA Art for Architecture project evolving over 6 sites across the UK (www.supportstructure.org);
and Strategic Questions (2002-2007), an ongoing series of 40 projects in 40
publications including 32. What is Harmonic? (2003) with Bill Drummond, Duncan
McLaren and Simon Wood for Sharjah Biennial, UAE and 16. What is brain? (2005)
with Henrik Schrat at Kunstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin. Previous curated projects
include Nathan Coley: Black Tent, (2003) Portsmouth Cathedral; STRIKE (2002)
(adjusted by Liam Gillick) Wolverhampton Art Gallery; 3in1, (2001) Nylon, London;
Let’s Get To Work, (2000-2001) San Francisco, Harrisburg & Philadelphia;
Nathan Coley & Bas Jan Ader (2001) Vilma Gold, London; Curating In The 21st
Century (2000) (editor) The New Art Gallery Walsall; Dave Beech: Watch Out For
The Agoraphobic Saviours of Mankind (2000) Flag, London; In The Midst Of Things
(1999) (with Nigel Prince), Bournville, Birmingham; Hello..clk..bzz..whrr..Nice
To Meet You (1999) (with Kathrin Böhm) Nuremberg; and Kling Klang, (1998)
HMS Plymouth, Birkenhead.Born 1971, lives and works
in Birmingham, UK.
Download related texts:
Art & Language’s
‘Painting by Mouth’
Dave Beech’s ‘Towards an Alphabet of Cultural Rivalry’
'Sunday Afternoon at the Mappin Gallery' article in Evening Star, August 2nd, 1887
Transcripts from the Spectator T Symposium, which took place as part of the programme on 28 October 2005
All files are in .pdf format. You will require a PDF reader to read them.