Assume Nothing: New Social Practice

Taking cues from 1960s performance touchstones including Joseph Beuys and Fluxus, an international roster of artists investigates the “expanding field of socially engaged art” in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s group exhibition “Assume Nothing.” Subtitled “New Social Practice,” the ambitious show features 16 interactive, often public, projects that test the boundaries between artist and participant, performer and viewer, offering what curator Lisa Baldissera describes as a “challenge to the traditional relationship between art and society.”

Several projects in the show offer a tongue-in-cheek rethinking of the social role of art, such as Harrell Fletcher’s collaboratively produced play using local residents as actors, or the Vancouver/Toronto collective Instant Coffee’s Light Bar: a functioning bar that is part community watering hole, part laboratory for experiments on the mood-elevating effects of light exposure.

But there are also works that mine the psychological tension and alienation that can result from collaborations between strangers. Local artist Robert Wise, for instance, presents his The Office: A Portable Amenity Kiosk for Female Outdoor Sex Workers, an interactive machine and office space that is the culmination of his graduate research in sociology. Videos by Warsaw-based artist Artur Zmijewski, on the other hand, document the effects of the artist’s provocative “social experiments” where conflicting community groups attempt to express their political and religious differences while working together to create a new national iconography. With works by A-list artists like Mark Dion, Annie Pootoogook, Haegue Yang and others rounding out the exhibition, “Assume Nothing” is sure to offer a fresh perspective on the social function of art in the contemporary urban landscape. (1040 Moss St, Victoria BC)