What’s On | The Street by Minerva Cuevas | Whitechapel Art Gallery

Exhibition: The Street – Minerva Cuevas: S.COOP

Location: Whitechapel Art Gallery, Whitechapel Road, London. MAP

Date: 5th March – 26th April 09

Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas creates interventions that take place in a range of settings, from museums to the internet and the public realm. Often working with archives as a starting point, her practice is firmly rooted in local histories and experiences, and creates socially engaged actions that reflect on personal, political and visual economies.

For The Street, Minerva Cuevas designs and creates a new currency, the S·COOP, inspired by early twentieth century co-operative society tokens. During the project, S·COOP coins will be circulated by Petticoat Lane market traders as change for purchases. Meanwhile, The Shop – The Street headquarters – will become Monochrome, an ice-cream parlour where the coins can be redeemed in exchange for ice-cream. Although available in different flavours the ice-creams are all white.

Connecting with the history of social activism in the East End of London, the project presents an archive of co-operative tokens originating from collectives from Lanark in Scotland to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, and more locally from a Spitalfields Co-op Store based at Peabody Buildings on Wentworth Street. The project explores the nature of community and poses questions about value, commercialism and the functioning of power in art and society.

Cuevas’ project extends to the Whitechapel Gallery 176 project space in April. For this show, Cuevas spent time researching the Whitechapel Gallery’s rich archive and uncovered magic lantern slides depicting illustrated and photographed snow scenes. With no documented link to any past projects at the Gallery, these slides hold a mysterious and unexplained presence within the archive. Cuevas brings new life to these items, drawing on their circular forms and monochrome imagery to create a new installation.

S.COOP concludes the first phase of The Street, a year-long series of artist commissions on and around Wentworth Street. The next phase of The Street will see new artist commissions further investigating notions of place and community. To see the commissions go to The Shop located at 26-28 Toynbee Street, London. E1 7NE. MAP (open Weds-Sun, 1100-1700)

Review: Planning to attend this event? Submit a review for InterventTech – claire@interventtech.net

Image by Patrick Lears – Image Source

Information sourced from Whitechapel Art Gallery

~ by claire_w on February 22, 2009.