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| 02 |
| An opened newspaper |
Suitcase 02 was found on 25 October, 1996, in a wastepaper bin near Piccadilly train station, Manchester, England. It was not locked. It resembles a box made from ancient, seasoned wood. Inside is a copy of 'The Guardian' newspaper from Wednesday October 23. Section two was uppermost, opened at page 10. This page is given over to an article by Jonathan Jones who is not, and never has been, an employee of the VFI.
Who is Karen Eliot?
Karen Eliot once placed a roll of toilet paper next to the Rosetta Stone. For some
it was a gesture of Duchampian wit, for others a piece of puerile toilet humour.
On January 1 1990 she vanished from the scene, a participant in the notorious Art
Strike of 1990-93. Now she's back. A one-woman show at Liverpool's 'Visionfest' this month confirms
her as an art star. 'Andy Warhol wanted to be a machine,' she says, 'I've achieved
his ambition'.
Eliot's work invites us to think about individual identity. She fills the gallery
with autobiographical ephemera. Photographs, press clippings and Super-8 movies document
a chaotic life. We're told about Eliot's adolescence in Berlin and early career with
a punk band. We find out she worked as a fabricator of others' ideas before striking
out for herself. The most banal aspects of an artist's everyday life are documented.
It becomes clear she has bad business sense. 'The other artists seemed to be moving
effortlessly through this art jamboree but I could only stare in disbelief as their
work changed hands in front of me.'
In 1917 Man Ray took a photograph of his friend Rrose Selavy in fur coat and furs. Rrose was
Marcel Duchamp in drag. She owned the copyright on some of his readymades. The art
of the Readymade, invented by Duchamp, is an evasion of identity. There is no assertion
of individual genius, no claim of authorship in placing a urinal in an art gallery.
The Readymade has returned with a vengeance in British art of the nineties. 'I like
the idea of rich people buying my burned-out fag-ends,' Damien Hirst said in a recent
interview. His work had become increasingly a joke about authorship. The spin paintings
are made on a machine. They're Damien Hirsts because he signs them. As Hirst and
his contemporaries become more famous, however, commercial possibilities tempt them
to assert a more traditional artistic identity.
Karen Eliot is important because, as the Duchampian tendency in contemporary British
art becomes respectable, she reminds us of its more radical implications. Her art
reached quiet perfection in 'Overprints and Undertones', 1989. This was an exhibition
of overprinted paper plucked from a printer's bin, whose patterns and layers of colour
were random by-products of an industrial process. All Karen Eliot did was pick out
the prettiest ones. 'The superimposition of different images,' she said, 'and the
combination of overprinted image and text can create strong compositions purely through accidental
aesthetics. They are scratch graphics from the Printer's House - machine art for
a post-industrial age.
Karen Eliot isn't quite real. She's an experiment in identity. The ABC committee wanted
to find out if an artist's identity can be constructed in an exhibition. As the ABC
committee freely admit, the joke isn't new. The Karen Eliot with a show in Liverpool has adopted the form of the average British artist, identified by the ABC committee
on the basis of an Arts Council report as 'female, aged 30-35 and not working with
painting or sculpture'.
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Peter Greenaway | ......... |  |