The civic-minded art promoters of Public Eye must have done something very special to ensure that the most recent incarnation of the South African National Gallery’s hugely successful art parties, YDETAG — sponsored by the Young Designer’s Emporium — wouldn’t be rained
out. Perhaps it was the sacrifice of Veronique Malherbe, booted off the exhibitor’s list at the 11th hour, that propitiated the weather gods.
For five or six hours on Friday night it felt as if summer was coming. Artists, students and designers, architects and writers assembled at the gallery — the queue stretched right around the block. High above the throng, surmounting the entrance to the gallery, James Webb’s neon lights flashed out the message “Know thy worth”. Those who had strong ideas about their worth left before they could spend an hour in the queue thinking about it, the rest filed dutifully inside for the now-familiar carnival of art-play.
The theme for the event was, appropriately enough, the convergence of art and advertising. It goes without saying that there is interesting work to be made at the intersection of art and commerce, and art that understands its own role in the circulation of commodities can tell us important things about the creation and consumption of images and objects. However, the theme also invites facile responses and YDETAG was completely dominated by work at this level.
Contrary to expectation, it wasn’t the participating ad agencies that produced the most trivial responses — on the contrary King James’ Sheep, a droll dissection of pseudo-scientific market segmentation, was among the more successful pieces on the show and while living Ken and Barbie created for YDE by Daddybuymepony is not going to get them into the Anthony d’Offay gallery, it is perfectly pitched at its audience.
Perhaps the problem faced by the participants is that we are so comfortable dwelling in the nexus of art and marketing that critique is banal or exhausted before it even happens, and more playful comment is beside the point. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if the work is facile. One is in no position to respond to more demanding work in this setting and surely anything that creates a massive queue outside the national gallery must be good.
Perhaps it’s not too much to ask, however, for a better-executed spectacle, even as one sets aside any requirements for deep thought. This is partly a matter of organisation — separating the entertainment areas and the exhibition space and forcing people to stand in line for an hour to move between them works strongly against the basic principle of these events — but it is also a matter of the participants working harder. Less casual production — no badly mounted photographs and sexier performance work — would be a start.
So much for caveats: by all the measures that matter, YDETAG was a major success for Public Eye, and it should lure other creative and flexible sponsors. Not only that, for a few hours it was like summer under the mountain.