Gustav Metzger is my Dad

In the Inbox yesterday came the press release for a new exhibition at the Centre of Attention: The Centre of Attention is delighted to present a new piece: Fodder (shredded proposals). The Centre of Attention commissioned a selection of artists unrepresented by a commercial dealer to put forward a proposal on paper for a show, a work or an idea etc. 15 artists took part. All the proposals from these artists were then collected by us and shredded. This shredded material was gathered up and placed on a plinth in the gallery space. And finally it was given a name... Fodder

This reminded me a little of an exhibition we did at Camerawork. Entitled Gustav Metzger is my Dad, AKA The Shredding Show, it involved the shredding of the organisation’s paperwork in “celebration” of London Arts Board decision to cut the core funding (this despite Camerawork having just been awarded a lottery grant to buy the building).

Gustav himself turned up and put a few documents through the machine, and by the close of the weekend the gallery was knee deep in shredded paper. London Arts were themselves shredded a few years later by the new Arts Council.  By then however it was too late for Camerawork who continued without funding for another three years before merging with Four Corners in 2001. Four Corners took ownership of the Camerawork building a valuable asset even back then thereby ensuring their future, and in return maintained the photographic darkroom facilities, and an exhibition programme.  

Gustav Metzger is my Dad was the product of a form of group curation: the idea of doing the shredding was mine (all mine), and after a discussion in which I proposed (tongue in cheek) "Ready Shreddy Go" as a possible title John Roberts (the outgoing curator) said we needed something more Fluxus to which I replied "Yoko Ono is my Mum" he then came back with with "Gustav Metzger is my Dad", adding that he had Gustav's (secret) London address, finally Geoff Cox (the outgoing education programmer) commissioned the software to do an online version (he also took the pics on this page).

Update February 2022

I made a trip to Tate Britain yesterday and spied in their downstairs Tate Archive is 50 exhibition a copy of the press release for Gustav Metzger is my Dad. The copy on display has the annotation "wish we had thought of this - Cambridge Darkroom" and an enlarged version of the invite card. The information text stated that Camerawork closed in 1988 after the show - an easy enough mistake to make, but there were another 5 exhibitions (Baffle (group show), Still Films (Fiona Crisp solo exhibition), Fit for Fun (Scheufler & Heiss exhibition), Postcards on Photography (group show curated by Cambridge Darkroom), and Consuming Desire (John Jordan solo exhibition).