Used/User/Used News from the School of Art, Architecture and Design

Cass students help curate latest exhibition at Zabludowicz Collection.

Students from MA Curating the Contemporary taught by The Cass and Whitechapel Gallery have worked with peers on courses at University of the Arts and Goldsmiths to a curate Use/User/Used, new exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection.

 "The one thing we share—exhaustion—makes us an inoperative community, an exhausted community, or a community of the exhausted." Jan Verwoert

Use/User/Used/ is an exhibition that explores the effects of 24/7 working culture and questions societal pressures to continuously perform. The show presents works from the Zabludowicz Collection alongside new live performance and dance commissions. Together these examine the exhaustive and depletive consequences of a network culture that emphasizes increasing productivity and efficiency in both work and leisure time. Collectively, the works reflect on what it means to be exhausted as a physical body, as a mental state, and as a material resource.

Exhibiting artists

Showing works from the Zabludowicz Collection are: Nick Darmstaedter, Nicolas Deshayes, Alex Dordoy, Matias Faldbakken, Lizzie Fitch, Yngve Holen, Josh Kline,Nikki S. Lee, Rachel Maclean, Kris Martin, Tobias Madison, Seth Price, Lucy Tomlins,Kirstine Roepstorff, Jack Strange, Artie Vierkant, and Gary Webb.

Newly commissioned live works will be presented by: Lea Collet and Marios Stamatis,Filippo Marzocchi, and Laura Yuile.

Use/User/Used/ confronts a culture driven by consumption and the effects of rapid advances in mass-production and digital technology. With the decrease of manual labour and the rise of increasingly automated systems, endless connectivity, and planned obsolescence, we have created an economy based on systematic exhaustion in which success and fulfilment are mapped by upgrades and improved efficiency. 

Now in its eighth year, the exhibition is part of the Collection’s annual Testing Ground for Art and Education season, which supports the creative and professional development of emerging artists and curators. Use/User/Used/ is curated by students of the MA/MFA Curating courses at Goldsmiths University of London, Chelsea College of Art, and Sir John Cass Faculty of Art at London Metropolitan University. Produced collaboratively over a period of three months, the resulting exhibition has been selected from over 3000 Collection works and brings together some of the most significant artists in contemporary art with new commissions by artists proposed by the emerging curators.

Combining a diverse cross section of curatorial perspectives from five countries across Europe the participating curators are: Luis Araujo, Mattia Giussani, Lorna McDowell, Giovanni Rendina, Celine Roblin-Robson, Alexine Rodenhuis, Angela Sanchez del Campo, Duarte Sequeira, and Kirsty White.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a dynamic public programme of performances, curator-led tours and family workshops.

Testing Ground for Art and Education is an annual season focused on opportunities for the creative and professional development of emerging artists and curators. A continuously evolving programme, Testing Ground collaborates with educational and artist-led organisations to develop experimental exhibitions and events that facilitate a consideration and testing-out of new ideas and modes of practice.

Image credit: Josh Kline, Packing for Peanuts, Fedex Worker’s Head with Knit Cap, 2014, USA Photo by Joerg Lohse (detail)