4-14 february 09

the gift marketplace
verity-jane keefe in residence 4-14th february 2009.
final viewing of the stall, video portrait, gift raffle, and other activities february 14th 2009.

in the gift marketplace, whitechapel market comes to the gift shop. verity will engage with the community - stallholders, shopkeepers, commuters, visitors and set up small exchanges, offering her skills in return for anything they might have to offer. these items will then form the basis of a market stall at the gift shop. the same people will be invited to the shop to participate in making sessions, and the products of these sessions - film, 3d, text, drawing, planting - will be added to the items on the stall. verity is particularly interested in identifying unused creative skills: the shop keeper with ambitions of being a rock star, market vendor / painter, hospital worker / writer etc. a video portrait of the marketplace (offsite and onsite) will be screened as a culmination to the residency, alongside other documents. by trying to replace monetary exchange with skills exchange, verity hopes to explore lewis 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”.