| Next to Gilbert and George, Bob and Roberta Smith might just be the most infamous couple in the contemporary art world (and far less creepy and terroristic than the duo). But, like most folk hero gestalts (Robin and Marian, Bonny and Clyde, Kenan and Kel), the nature of their existence is in some dispute; supplementary research reveals that “Bob” is not really a Bob (his real name is—allegedly—Patrick Brill), while Roberta, although really a Roberta, stopped being a professional Smith many years ago. Disinclined to let their technical non-existence get in the way, the Smiths—whoever they are—have determinedly pushed the boundaries of Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics to comic, sometimes alarming extremes.. |  |
Upside Down Is The New Rightside Up – Mitchell Miller
Next to Gilbert and George, Bob and Roberta Smith might just be the most infamous couple in the contemporary art world (and far less creepy and terroristic than the duo). But, like most folk hero gestalts (Robin and Marian, Bonny and Clyde, Kenan and Kel), the nature of their existence is in some dispute; supplementary research reveals that “Bob” is not really a Bob (his real name is—allegedly—Patrick Brill), while Roberta, although really a Roberta, stopped being a professional Smith many years ago.
Disinclined to let their technical non-existence get in the way, the Smiths—whoever they are—have determinedly pushed the boundaries of Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics to comic, sometimes alarming extremes. Speaking over the phone, Brill is enthusiastic, pithy and forthright, unafraid to dismiss Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North “as something Albrecht Speer would be proud of,” while enthusing over the possibilities for outreach by explaining: “There’s a lot of amazing work going on in these outreach areas—just beyond what a private gallery might deal with.”
If the Bob and Roberta persona seems absurd, the humour and burlesque of it masks a deadly serious intent as stated in the book Make Your Own Damn Art; “Bob and Roberta Smith believe in art and democracy. Bob and Roberta Smith provoke the public. They see the public as a body to cajole, kick and stick pins in, but also to encourage and to liberate.”
Under the Smith’s tender mercies, relational aesthetics are positioned somewhere between a breach of the peace and communal celebration. “It is using the idea that artworks are networks,” explains Brill, “[it is] putting an activity in a space rather than an artwork, about using the real talents of people.” Subsumed within the Bob and Roberta persona, conventional notions of authorship are less important than the quality of collaboration between artist and public.
This openness, however, has its pitfalls. In a recent sign-writing project, scrap wood was pressed into service as the blank canvas for the participants to letter their innermost feelings, thoughts and whims, gradually building it into a nest of signs. The finished chaos of wooden placards embodied the messy energy of workshopping as a collective self-portrait of feelings and impressions (see title). These feelings were not always palatable; “Working with the public is fraught with problems. You think it’s right on and PC—but it’s not like that at all. For example, with this project people came out with these terrible xenophobic statements…it really makes you think about motivation, art and propaganda.”
“There is a whole new generation of artists who see the social realm as something to work with,” says Brill of contemporaries who have also embraced the moral complexity of the public as incentive rather than deterrent. Finessing the difficulties of engaging with the ever-unpredictable public is what makes Bob and Roberta thrive; their work a sort of parlour of societal mores, upset conventions and inverted power relationships such as “Shop Local,” a project that audaciously created advertising hoards for humble market stallholders and shopkeepers in Shoreditch.
The new generation of public artists (though few relish the term) include Steven Healy, Paul Carter and Jenny Brownrigg in the celebrated “Royston Road Parks” project, Mark Neville in “Port Glasgow,” the “Juneau” project in Thurrock, Stephan Gec’s Tillsbury Mapamundi or Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie’s Bata-ville. The last four artists (or artist couplets) worked under the auspices of Commissions East, a commissioning body charged with initiating art projects in the regenerating silt belt of the Thames Gateway—a strip of ex-industrial land, decaying housing estates and ex-military installations undergoing intensive (and very expensive) regeneration as a new commuter zone for London. A substantial chunk of the regeneration money has been devoted to public art—not to decorate yuppie flats but to involve and engage local communities throughout the transition.
Bob and Roberta have been awarded the curatorship of the latest phase in Commissions East’s work, “Art U Need: An Outdoor Revolution.” As a body, Commissions East is distinct in deliberately establishing itself in a bricks and mortar space, emulating the work that it funds. If the work they fund ultimately melts away or packs up, then at least there are no forlorn statues or disintegrating installations left lying around.
Shedding the worst preconceptions over what public art can achieve is the first task for the Smiths in the inception of “Art U Need.” Brill recounts a comment from a committee member “if we have a public statue here it will have to be flint and chalk [the local materials] and it would probably erode anyway…” And, sure enough for many, this still amounts to cute statues of concrete pigeons (Edinburgh), the epidemic of gaudily coloured cows in British town centres or the BBC’s recent commission for Broadcasting House—a spectacular lightshow allegedly but, in reality, an overblown dressing and redressing of a corporate junkspace.
The Thames Gateway area has more than its fair share of corroded utopianism and hollow spectacles—entire tracts of neglected open spaces. The Smiths eagerly anticipate the creative grist to the mill that this history offers. Three out of the five artists have been appointed for their skill in working with people and environments; Jane Wilbraham at the Garrison estate (a compact housing project originally built for military families which is now a troubled community facing an uncertain future); Hayley Newman, set to work with a hobbyist “colony” in the town of Roachford; and Lucy Harrison drawing upon the local history of Canvey Island. “Thurrock is an incredible landscape of failed utopian visions,” says Brill. He relates also, with infectious enthusiasm, his own favourite tale from Canvey’s history. One about a derelict installation built by oil giant Shell. Replete with pipes, roads and fixtures, the grand design was rendered useless by the discovery of an incredibly rare orchid, fertilised by the mud dredged up for the project.
With artists still to be appointed to Southend and Basildon, the £300,000 project is one of the most ambitious public art projects in the country (and the biggest yet for The Smiths). It will inevitably be seen as a keynote in the career of the artist who notoriously declared an “Amnesty of Bad Art” in New York’s Pierogi gallery in 2002. True to form, Bob and Roberta cheerfully promise to throw a few
spanners in the works in making the people of The Thames Gateway think about what is happening to their locales—whether or not upside down is the new rightside up. “I’ve not thought of myself as a public artist,” say The Smiths, “but I’ve always used the public in my work. So far I’ve always done it on the cheap side—now I’ve been given money to do it.”
