‘I TRY TO HELP THEM GIVE FORM TO THEMANY OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO THEM.’

A CENTER FOR ARTAUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

Produced in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title,featuring works by James Deutsher (Australia), Kel Glaister(Australia), Simon Glaister (New Zealand), and Michael Stevenson(Germany/New Zealand), with talks by Charles Ninow andSriwhana Spong.Curated by Daniel Munn for A Center for Art, February, 2010.

Contents

1 Y3K: Art & the Luxury Goods Market

1Jarrod Rawlins

2 Nonchalantly Unimpressed

(Excerpt) 3

Amy Marjoram

The New Masters

(Excerpt) 5

Hamish Coney

4 Dan Arps

Interview by Sarah Hopkinson

Managing Our Fear of Disaster Through Simulation

9(Excerpt)Dr. Melissa Laing

6 A Brush with Formalities

(Excerpt)

Charles Ninow

7 Derrick Cherrie

Interview by Daniel Munn and Martyn Reynolds

Guy Ngan

23Interview by Martyn Reynolds

Y3K: Art & the Luxury Goods Market

by Jarrod Rawlins

Originally appearing in the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Too Much of Everything’ curated byffiXXed at Y3K, Melbourne, May 2009.

The luxury goods market is the mainstay of the art market. The trading andpresentation of art relies entirely on the same principles as that of the luxurygoods market, and like the luxury goods market the art market relies on twothings – retail spaces and the Veblen effect.It is commonly accepted that the luxury goods market supplies the followingproducts: perfume and cosmetics, homes and apartments, yatchs, cars, homeappliances, gourmet foods, fashion and leather goods, watches and jewellery,wine and spirits, services including travel and beauty services. This is of course a reductive view that excludes two of the oldest and most luxuriousthings in the market – art and education.A pioneer of art and the luxury goods market must surely be Seth Siegelaubwho in the late 1960s began marketing artists such as Carl Andre, RobertBarry and Lawrence Weiner. With his gallery located at 16 W56th St in NewYork, Siegelaub was dealing in conceptual art and oriental rugs. Here hehired a young Dan Graham to help market the work by articulating how thestrategy of the conceptual artist “involves placing a verb as well as a noun”.This strategy, to have these statements, these articulations, repeated by themarket until it validated these products, worked in much the same way PrinceHousain or King Solomon’s flying carpets validated the oriental rug as aluxury good.It is still possible for people to be uncomfortable with the fact that art is partof a worldwide luxury goods market, and by this I am not referring to asimplistic understanding of art as a market, art as a commodity, yes, good,whatever. As part of the luxury goods market art confounds the history of collecting. Many people who collect art do not collect handbags, holidays, orhome appliances. Many people who collect handbags, holidays and homeappliances do not consume art. This proposition may be in paradox toconventional consuming wisdom but the theory of Veblen goods proposesthat a thing is desirable because of its price point. The $1,000 bottle of wineis more desirable that the $20 bottle of wine (don’t confuse this with myth). Ifind this proposition difficult to argue against; sure, the $20 bottle may be abetter wine at the time of drinking, but price dictates that the $1,000 bottle bemore desired. This seemingly simple equation was born from early researchinto Game theory, the study of players and strategies, and its legacy lies inVeblen’s 1899 conspicuous consumption