verity-jane keefe / the gift marketplace

in residence 4th-14th february 2009

closing saturday 14 february (valentine’s day)

the gift marketplace

The residency will explore the idea of 2a as an extension of the existing literal and conceptual marketplace, using it as a market stall and as a base for informal consultation.

the project will engage with the market community, stallholders, shopkeepers, market users, commuters and hospital visitors on an exchange basis, where I offer my skills in return for their commodities (or anything else that may be offered). these materials/commodities will then form the basis of my market stall within 2a. those encountered throughout the process will be invited to the shop to participate in making sessions. the products of these sessions, be it film, print, 3d, text, planting will then become the gifts stocked on my stall. i am particularly interested in identifying unused creative skills by the participants to form the basis of the making session. shop workers with ambitions of being a rock star, market stall holder as painter, hospital worker as writer etc. the project blog will be promoted as a tool for the participants to be kept updated and update themselves on the journey taken. in addition, i would also propose to make a video portrait of the marketplace (offsite and onsite) which could be screened as a culmination to the residency.

it is this relationship of the close looking from the outside in that should be the catalyst to move this project forward: how we make a place as artists, inhabitants, existing in formal and informally constructed community groups utilising what is already present as opposed to by the addition of something new. by trying to replace monetary exchange with skill exchange, i hope to explore hyde’s comment on how the artist “who has chosen to labour with a gift … is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange”.

verity-jane keefe

verity-jane Keefe is a visual artist, working predominantly within the public realm, using moving image, text and installation-based work to explore the complex relationships between people and place and the idea of the landscape as museum. she is interested in the role of the artist within urban regeneration and how quality experiential practice can touch upon and raise ambitions of existing and invisible communities.

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