In this exhibition four artists from one nuclear family collaborate on a series of multimodal works that celebrate their very existence as a single creative entity.
The communal nature of The Rileys’ practice sees them forego personal identities as artists, relinquishing the subjectivity of the individual in favour of a negotiated aesthetic of involvement1; a confluence of persons in a shared creative expression that connects their artmaking and living in a mutual ‘art life’. The Rileys decry the romantic notion of the individual inspired artist expressing ‘personal truths’ as a modernist anachronism, the persistence of which in the mainstream art market serves to separate art from life for most people, leaves aesthetics to specialists and turns artmaking into the production of commodities for passive consumption by a ‘non-art’ populace. WE AM: The (Art) Life of Riley seeks to support a further democratization of art through participatory practices and relational aesthetics2, because we believe, as did Joseph Beuys, that “…every person is an artist”.3
Notes:
1 Maybury-Lewis, Prof. D, Millenium: Tribal wisdom for the Modern World (Penguin Viking, 1992)
2 Bourriaud, Nicolas, ‘Traffic’ Exhibition Catalogue (Contemporary Art Museum, Bordeaux, 1995)
3 Bodenmann-Ritter, Clara and Ullstein Frankfurt (eds.), 'Every Person is an Artist’: Talks at Documenta 5 by Joseph Beuys, 1972, (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd 6th edition, 1997)
The communal nature of The Rileys’ practice sees them forego personal identities as artists, relinquishing the subjectivity of the individual in favour of a negotiated aesthetic of involvement1; a confluence of persons in a shared creative expression that connects their artmaking and living in a mutual ‘art life’. The Rileys decry the romantic notion of the individual inspired artist expressing ‘personal truths’ as a modernist anachronism, the persistence of which in the mainstream art market serves to separate art from life for most people, leaves aesthetics to specialists and turns artmaking into the production of commodities for passive consumption by a ‘non-art’ populace. WE AM: The (Art) Life of Riley seeks to support a further democratization of art through participatory practices and relational aesthetics2, because we believe, as did Joseph Beuys, that “…every person is an artist”.3
Notes:
1 Maybury-Lewis, Prof. D, Millenium: Tribal wisdom for the Modern World (Penguin Viking, 1992)
2 Bourriaud, Nicolas, ‘Traffic’ Exhibition Catalogue (Contemporary Art Museum, Bordeaux, 1995)
3 Bodenmann-Ritter, Clara and Ullstein Frankfurt (eds.), 'Every Person is an Artist’: Talks at Documenta 5 by Joseph Beuys, 1972, (I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd 6th edition, 1997)
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