The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies
2004The project takes as a case history the story of Mr. Ian Fairweather,
a remarkable artist whose post-Gauguin/proto-hippy exploits locate him
beyond the conventional market economy. My interest was in Fairweather’s
remarkable passage back to London from Australia in 1952. It was a voyage
that exceeded all convention: in mode and, not in the least, because it
was most probably made entirely without monetary exchange.
Fairweather, a Scottish born artist spent much of his life roaming the
colonial world, destitute, on the very fringes of society. In the 1940’s
he settled in Australia. His return to Britain in the 1950s began in Darwin,
on Australia’s northern coast. At the free public library he read Heyerdahl’s
Kon-tiki Expedition. Fairweather was at this time living on the beach
where, perhaps inspired by Heyerdahl, he collected drop tanks, torpedo-shaped
aircraft fuel tanks that he used as flotation aids to build his own raft.
Fairweather’s raft was essentially these 3 aluminium drop tanks and a
parachute for a sail: materials that quite literally ‘fall from the sky’.
After 17 days at sea he made landfall on the edge of the Indonesian archipelago,
the local police eventually interned him but, after claiming British citizenship,
he was finally deported to London. In southern England he did hard labour
to pay his debt to the British crown. Throughout this process it seems
no money changed hands.
The emergence of an extra-monetary or gift economy in the arts and its
long association with destitution and poverty were key points in the re-telling
of the Fairweather story. By applying ethnological structures to this
‘informal’ aspect of the art world (or more precisely the extraordinary
art economy) a description of a social economy emerges based on reciprocal
responsibilities and mutual interdependence with uncertain, mutable boundaries.
The raft replica was built as a workshop with a group of Sea Scouts, then
exhibited, and was finally sold to a group of collectors in Aachen called
the Twodos. According to Twodo custom, acquisitions are required to be
held collectively amongst its 24 members. After further investigations
regarding Fairweather’s arrival in Indonesia I discovered that local fishermen
nursed the artist back to health and also enacted a kind of informal exchange
– they took the raft and divided the aluminium tanks putting the parts
to more practical uses. In a ceremony in Aachen - the raft was dismembered
and divided amongst the collectors. The raw parts were then re-fashioned
into village chattels and then given back to the Twodos. This event began
with a lecture on the subject of apportionment by Marilyn Strathern, a
leading Social Anthropologist.
The formalised interaction with the Twodos was developed, not to replicate
an extra-monetary economy but rather as a point of contemplation on such
systems. For me at least, this project began years earlier when I found
myself in Aachen, seriously ill with pneumonia. A doctor, and member of
the Twodo group, treated me as a private patient since I had no health
insurance. Later I gave the doctor an artwork. A number of other spontaneous
exchanges with Twodo members have also taken place over the years; most
recently a swap was made for tax accounting services.
related: Kon-Tiki Museum,
NAK
– Twodo Collection
Darren Knight
Gallery, Sydney, 11.05.04 - 05.06.04
Herbert Read Gallery, KIAD, Canterbury 26.11.04 – 23.12.04
Neue Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Twodo project 28.08.05 – 02.10.05
Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore »Ian Fairweather - artist of the 21st century« (group exhibition) 02.12.05 - 21.01.06
Berlinische Galerie, Berlin »Abgebrannt« (group exhibition) 27.08.06 - 8.10.06
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane »APT 5« (group exhibition) 02.12.06 - 27.05.07
