Is this OK?

Artistic labour is usually dislocated from the exhibition format, and is therefore also dislocated from the public. Cultural labour on an institutional level, that is the labour of the people working at institutions, is similarly dislocated and invisible from the public's view. Is this OK? relocates multiple levels of artistic labour into the exhibition format.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Oslo based Australian artist Martin White (b. 1978) and London based Australian artist Matthew Berka (b. 1992). Throughout the exhibition the artists will create a performative and spatialized video documentary – the subject of the work being the location, the people, the spaces, and the operations of the institution, in this case Oslo Kunstforening. 

What has emerged throughout the mounting process is the strong dynamic character of the institution, expressed through the body of the institution – be it literally spatial, or manifesting through the institution’s staff. This exhibition enables viewers to witness work made about the rooms in which it is shown, work made inside and with an institution, in which it is exhibited.

The exhibition requires both that the duo will be working live in the gallery and also that the gallery's administration are present each day that the exhibition is open. The working and opening hours have been changed to: Wednesday - Sunday 12 - 5pm. 

The process of superimposing the work associated with an exhibition into the exhibition itself will bring the public into contact with both the labour of the artists and labour of the people working at and for an institution. This brings the viewers into a direct relationship with the institution’s activity; making transparent what is usually opaque.

In 2003, Jonas Ekeberg borrowed the term ‘new institutionalism’ from sociology to describe an emergent pattern in contemporary art. Artists were taking cues from institutional critique of the 1970s and developing these motifs into a form that engaged with cultural institutions in a new manner - not simply a critical manner. These artists used the museums as testing sites, production facilities, laboratories, and as a social ‘petri dishes’. 

“This art takes the art institution and the art system into consideration but in order to problematise them rather than dismiss them. [...] Furthermore, this kind of art often contains an institutional critique, but whereas the critique of the older artists [...] is perhaps negative, this one is more constructive. It is about scepticism and enthusiasm, affirmation and critique all at the same time. As the older generation, so to speak, 'broke the ice' with their confrontations and polemics it is easier today to be more nuanced, smart and sensitive”. – Maria Lind quoted in New Institutionalism, Verksted #1, 2003, editor Jonas Ekeberg, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, p. 81-82 

Institutions were cajoled into new relationships with the public. They were challenged to relate to the public differently and to be as flexible in their institutional procedures as artists were in finding new forms and expressions. 

For Is this OK? White and Berka have taken the propositions of New Institutionalism and combined a deep and reflective institutional engagement with principles of experimental film, durational performance, documentary and video installation.

Through working so intimately with the institution including the space and the people, White and Berka have built a framework from where institutional operations and their relationship to the public become exposed. They are not, however, simply requiring the institution to expose itself, but they are exposing their own process throughout the exhibition period as they conduct their work inside the exhibition, in full view of the public. Is this OK? requires an enormous amount of institutional flexibility and mutual trust. It is a purely experimental work that will evolve over the course of the exhibition. Is this OK? is a system, a feedback loop (causality) and a tool for us to examine cultural production. 

The strategies that White and Berka have proposed function to turn the institution inside out – operationally and spatially, providing access to the public and providing a working studio to the artists. This work actively rethinks how a cultural institution can function. Relating as it does to institutional critique and relational art, and in an era of heightened institutional consideration of public reception and internal power structures, Is this OK? is in many ways relevant, challenging, ambitious and experimental. 

“To think of such a model also entails considering the role of the individual (or collective) as author and actor, especially in regard to what I would like to introduce as the ‘uninvited outsider’. This role can arguably facilitate new forms of communication and interaction between institution(s), audiences, and various (new) forms of publics. The institutional platform I have in mind is one that acts as an experimental space in which ideas do not - by necessity, policy, or protocol - have to be fully formed”. – Markus Miessen, Institutional Crossbenching as a form of Critical Production, in What ever Happened to New Institutionalism, edited by James Voorhies, Sternberg Press, 2016, p. 53

Over the course of the exhibition, the video work on display will change, develop and grow. There is an ongoing public engagement, as well as key events and artist talks within the system. We encourage visitors to return and see the development.