Adam Chodzko is coming to Wysing tomorrow to talk about his work from 2001, ‘Plan for a Spell’. We’ll be screening it of course and that will be followed by an in-conversation with writer and Wire magazine editor-at-large Rob Young. I haven't seen Adam for a while and have been remembering a work I commissioned by him for the South London Gallery collection in 2004 - the collection mainly dates from the gallery's Victorian origins, but it has some good contemporary work in it as well. The work by Adam, Settlement, sounded like a pretty straightforward proposition - he wanted to give a piece of land to a stranger as a gift. Specifically, a piece of so-called ‘public’ land from nearby Burgess Park. It was my job to figure out how to do that which involved getting into all kinds of convoluted conversations with lawyers - we were allowed to buy an A4-size piece of land, but not allowed to have the air space above it, or the ground beneath a 2cm thick piece of the surface - this was noted in the contract with Southwark Council. To deliberately add a further layer of complexity, Adam was determined to give the land to someone who was stateless and unlikely to ever be able to own any land in the UK. Somehow, I can’t quite remember how, we managed to do it and someone out there owns a tiny fragment of Britain. It was quite a good exhibition that - Perfectly Placed - new works commissioned for the collection by Adam, Cornford and Cross, Goshka Macuga, Janette Parris and Paula Roush - and in which the SLG became "a laboratory for the production and appreciation of art through debates, artist-led discussions and workshops" Sounds familiar! 

Tags: adam chodzko |