The Thousands

Democracy is a slippery thing. Add this to contemporary art, and you’ve got a veritable minefield of interpretation. Take it out of contemporary art and you’ve got something akin to a Malevich painting. Karl Shoobridge, Ben Havenaar and Erin Dunne have breezed on past that Malevich painting, and are interpreting their own versions of democracy in their exhibition, Democratique.

The three artists’ common interest lies in the conceptual, the technological and our consumption of it, essentially screwing with the formula, back and forth until it tells you what it wants to tell you. Dunne, for example, reconfigures facebook as though it’s attempting to humanise it’s subject. Shoobridge examines the implied ‘democracy’ of language. They say men made the English language? Well now the internet is creating its own.

Karl’s work explores the flux between labour (using house paint), urges and this language. Havenaar’s deconstructed / reconstructed perspex sculptures are an architectural fuck you to formalism – sleek but somewhat disconcerting. Head along and vote for your favourite work. Democratically.