Stuart Brisley considers his work to find the exploration of individualism within the collective.
The Artist Placement Group (APG) – emerged in London in the 1960s. The organisation actively sought to reposition the role of the artist within a wider social context, including government and commerce, while at the same time playing an important part in the history of conceptual art during the 1960s and 1970s.
In his early time Brisley undertook an artist placement with Hille, in a furniture company founded by Salamon Hille in 1906. Hille focused on renovating and reproducing eighteenth century furniture which merely focused on quality rather than quantity.
‘I was intrigued to see that the organic fluid system not only operated in terms of wide production possibilities but also that quite a large proportion of the production machinery had been modified, changed, and some had actually been built from scratch to overcome technical problems of production.’ -Stuart Brisley.
One of Brisley’s most notable pieces of work was created within the Hille fellowship. “Poly Wheel” is a circular wheel made from combining 212 chairs. He mostly focuses on art in unconventional spaces, specifically in industrial factories. The premise behind this piece of work is to symbolize labor without end.
Brisley’s Antics
During our talk, Katherine Jackson describes a moment in Brisley’s time when he was a bit problematic, in a millennial way. He was disappointed in the fact that he wasn’t invited to an opening at the Tate Britain, so him and his friend have decided to dress up as CNN camera men, to be able to sneak into the art exhibition. At that moment in time, an performance artist has created a sculpture that was exhibited, Brisley’s anger got the best of him and he had lit the sculpture on fire . This was so funny to me, because if Brisley would have done this today, he would be “canceled” and labeled as problematic, which he was probably labeled as in the 50s/60s, however social media was non-existent at that time which meant that his antics could go unnoticed.