The Duchampian Wheel of Taste & Smell: An Introduction to Artist-led Ale Tasting
The way to experience artist led beer isto imagine you are on a journey through a gallery – we call this an ale ‘de-rive’. Often though, you are just looking for the toilets.
Smells:
Intern’s New Coat: Have you noticed your Gallery Director sniffing the back of the office chair? Maybe you’ve caught your programme manager sniffing the invigilator’s stool? What are they sniffing? The smell of a young, undergraduate intern - uncorrupted by proposal rejection.
Underfunded Offsite Programme: The smell of a disused shop in an under-privileged area. This scent is often found within the cheap vanity project of the newly appointed assistant curator. Picture the scene, you are on the outskirts of town in front of a newly painted Portacabin. Hoards of youths surround you eyeing newly brought video equipment. And then it hits you: that’s the smell of the underfunded offsite programme.
New Head of Exhibitions: Rolex, smart shoes, mixed labels (Primark, Marks and Spencer’s). The second hand Audi that keeps breaking down. A dubious track record in small and regional institutions – a malevolent attitude towards sacking loyal staff. You will recognize this smell if you’ve been in one of those meetings.
Bought in touring exhibition: The sharp intake of falling audience numbers prompts regional curators to search for the big notes: Mueck, Hirst, Viola. A familiar smell in an unusual place; call it an Artists Rooms programme. Lingers for seven months - the whiff of the yearly budget evaporating.
Late Night Application Writing: Picture the scene. It’s late, you’re back from the studio, you’re still in your dirty install clothes. Shit, the residency deadline. A series of conflicting smells suddenly pervade the room: American spell-check, the spinning beach ball of death, attachment too big, the stale death breath of a harddrive crashing. The smell takes on a new dimension – your neighbour’s dressing gown as he opens the door to you at 2.00am. You are babbling on trying to explain the Site Gallery residency application procedure. You’re a month late, he doesn’t understand. Why? Why didn’t he tell you? You shake him; what does he mean – Doesn’t he know who Laura Sillars is? Argument. Police. Arrest.
Institutional Compromise: You can get a faint whiff of this when reading an overly obsequious press release. A complex aroma of contrasting smells. The big hit of a National Portfolio Organisation running flower-arranging classes during a Marc Quinn exhibition, just to access a local community church fund. Similar to the taste of the ubiquitous tax dodge of galleries registering as charities on the back of a few Saturday educational workshops.
Curator’s lunch: Gazpacho, green olives, pickled pilchards, slow roasted olives, lime houmous, olive bread, Tunnocks, Parmesan, olives. Stinks the fridge out for days as they’re away in Miami.*
*You know, usual-wannabee-eclectic-easily-seduced-by-ethical-packaging-curatorial-shit.
Technicians Vest: This smell needs to be rated on a scale of install days: the further in you go the mustier the smell becomes, the more pubic hair present. If you're getting a strong taste of technicians vest from the off then this beer might well be 'Nelsoned'. The smorgasbord of smells from previous installs can also be dated by the number of stains upon the vest.
* in particular look for the blood from Dan Graham installs – from a glass cut, not a fight with the notoriously moody Dan.
Live Art Culture: Close your eyes. What can you see? Are you in a warehouse? A semi dark room? Lots of people with piercings? Feeling itchy? An unhealthy amount of gratuitous nudity? Minimal critical content?
Body Art Residue: Similar, but not to be confused with Live Art Culture. Overriding hints of blood, pus, urine, deflated ego.
Criticality: the smell of Jennifer Higgie’s business card.
Taste:
Failed Associate Scheme: You are in a talk by Maria Lind, but it’s not even Maria Lind. It’s someone who looks a bit like Maria Lind reading Maria Linds’s writing. No one else seems to notice.
Disgruntled Local Artist: Bitter, sharp, prevalent at city council museum openings. Vocal and dismissive of anything post 1980. When a beer is aged in a dysfunctional studio group, it can often accrue this DLA flavor which unfortunately will never go away. High notes of impasto canvas and moldy tea bag left in mug.
Pointy Shoes: This is a generic taste for any micro-fashion trend: wearing a plaster on your ear, badges, ironic carrying of a portfolio.
Risky Install: blunt screws from Poundland, cheap masking tape, Ad hoc scaffold tower made from unsold Martin Parr catalogues. The taste of a volunteer graduate in flip-flops using a hammer drill in a darkened room.
Mature Learner: fresh milk in the fridge, new portfolio, culled axis-web subscriber. tea and cakes in the gallery cafes, misquoting Foucault in an artist newsletter opinion piece the effects of green toilet technology.
Ineffectual Artists Contract: What does it taste like? Nothing. You’ve given them a solo show, you payed them their fee in advance. But they’re too busy on their next project (a solo show in Brussels) to bother turning up.
Undisturbed Reading Area: The taste of the soft leather of uncleaned gallery earphones whilst killing time reading Pharaoh – the Faroe Islands only art criticism magazine.
Non-Art Audience: The taste of shock when they find an art gallery is attached to their favourite café / toilet.
Cheap White Wine: If you haven't tasted the true taste of really cheap white wine we recommend that you frequent a GOMA opening sometime soon.
Sour: The taste of spending two weeks writing an application for a residency only to find they’ve given it to Graham Gussin – again.
HUO: The cloying taste of a seminar that won’t end. Heavily weighted like a tote bag of never-to-be-read biennale catalogues.