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Born from an overarching theme throughout his previous work, Chris Evan’s latest installation Clerk of Mind at Project Arts Centre investigates the power relations involved between the artist and the overseer in commissioned pieces by bureaucratic elites, both corporate and political. An unlikely consummation of objects from contrasting social and industrial spheres sets the cornerstone for the exhibition.
We are greeted with A Needle Walks Into A Haystack, a platinum and yellow gold ring, encrusted with diamonds and sapphires, set in an ornately moulded band which was a commissioned piece by luxury jewellery retailers Boodles. It is here where we are initially met with the digression between the realms of conceptual art and commercialism as the ring is placed amidst what looks like the foundation of an abstract urban planning model, encased in a rosewood vitrine. Does the commissioning of art by bodies of bureaucracy dull the creative prowess of the artist? In the case of such an assignment, the emphasis usually lies on the aesthetic and the appeal of the finished product rather than its conceptual framework, but Evan’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the mechanisms of negotiation through commission becomes a provocative concept within itself, albeit leaving the viewer somewhat unsure as to his motives.
Evan’s role as an artist is further revamped when we approach his pieces entitled CLODS; a mesh between an industrial realm royal blue sheet of pvc layered over a functional interior-esque slab of clean white painted wood, garnished with a large dishevelled grey rock. This meeting of the harsh industrial and the organic echoes more of a sense of craftsmanship than artistry, but this is balanced out once again when we encounter his Diplomatic Letters, delicate gelatin prints of toxic and meddlesome plant species which are commissions by European diplomats. Although his work is visually and aesthetically palatable, there is a strong sense that Evan’s is playing the game of co-optation via commission rather than subverting it.
Clerk of Mind runs at Project Arts Centre until January 17.
