Call:
Art Career Snakes + Ladders
by Rebecca Davies

August 20 - October 16, 2021
The Demo ROom at Galleri Image (Aarhus, Denmark)

Art Career Snakes + Ladders visualizes the ups and downs of an artist’s working life using the format of its titular board game. In the traditional version of Snakes and Ladders, players roll a pair of dice to move across a grid board; the first to land on the “end” square wins the game. Along the way, players climb ladders, allowing them to jump ahead, and slip on snakes, causing them to fall back. It is a game of luck, where sudden leaps of progress and dismal setbacks are inevitable and beyond the players’ control.

Rebecca Davies re-imagines this classic board game through the lens of artistic experience. The “ladders” represent small victories - successful grant applications, artwork commissions, media coverage. The “snakes” undermine these achievements - inadequate funding, broken promises, internet trolling. Davies’ version of the game puts the player in the precarious position of an artist. As they move across the board, it becomes increasingly clear how their ability to navigate their career is limited by the art world’s funding structures and power dynamics. The emotional impact of this helplessness is best summarized by the board’s final square, where the winner “feels empty.”

Art Career Snakes + Ladders was originally conceived by Davies in her evaluation of Artists Make Change, a research project by the Artist Council of a-n The Artist Information Company, which explored artists’ potential to effect change in broader society.

Response:
G. T-Shirts
By Aysha Amin

October 22 - December 19, 2021
The Demo Room at Galleri Image (Aarhus, Denmark)

G.T-Shirts is a collection of t-shirts picturing residential apartments in Gellerup - a suburb of Aarhus that is infamous in Denmark as one of the country's oldest 'hard ghettos' (an official government classification). These buildings are often portrayed in Danish media as derelict, with images that support the dominant narrative that Gellerup is in need of rehabilitation. Many of these buildings are being torn down as part of a joint effort by the municipality and the local housing association to gentrify and demolish the area in response to Gellerup's persistent inclusion in the Danish government's "Ghetto List."

G.T-Shirts presents an alternate view of Gellerup. Since 2019, the artist-run cultural platform Andromeda 8220 has invited photographers to share images of Gellerup that center the architectural, functional, and aesthetic qualities of the apartment buildings. These images frame the buildings as welcoming and attractive, not something to be destroyed.

Once printed as G.T-shirts, the photographs are viewed in a new way - worn in public and private spaces, and encountered by others in the course of daily life. For many who wear them, the shirts have proven to be effective conversation starters about the buildings’ distinctive architecture and consequent value. Oftentimes, these conversations steer towards more political topics such as neighborhood change and gentrification. In this way the G.T-Shirts point to the potential of street fashion in political discourse.

However their installation in The Demo Room underscores the ways in which street wear is often appropriated and exploited by the fashion industry. With graffiti signage, the exhibition echoes fashion displays in nearby clothing store windows along the gallery’s trendy street.