Shared, West Wing, Somerset House
London
10-13 September 2015
CHECK-MATE SQUARED was an innovatory and a unique way of raising money for charity, created for The Macmillan De’Longhi Arts Programme. Investigating the possibilities of a digital rather than analogue booth and creating a large work that appeared to be a woven design made up (on closer inspection) of participants portraits in strips of 4, captured against alternative backgrounds of black and white. deavanagan.com.
Participants joined in the creation of the artwork when they donated money in order to become the basic components of that art. Using a photo-booth to record portraits of the people wishing to become patrons, I reprised certain aspects of public art work with which I made my name in the 1980s. This digital experiment proved equally successful with added financial benefit for Macmillan.
The show included another retrospective element, shown in addition to period analogue photo-booth pieces were a suite of digital works displayed within the grand rooms in enfilade in the West Wing of Somerset House, Strand. As a result of this exhibition, Palazzo Spada (cat) joined the British Academy Collection and became the subject for discussion by Professor Martin Kemp, British Academy Pictures Committee. britac.ac.uk.
Other exhibiting artists were Stephen Chambers, Eloise Fornieles, Idris Khan, Alastair Mackie, Annie Morris, Humphrey Ocean, Gavin Turk, Bouke de Vries, Richard Wentworth, Hugo Wilson, and Richard Wilson, all of whom devised ways to ‘break down’ their works to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. This fundraising exhibition provided collectors with the rare opportunity to buy and own an element of a single major artwork.