FREEE, Protest Drives History, Billboard poster, Freee, 2008.
FREEE is a collective made up of 3 artists, Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan, who work together on slogans, performances, billboards and publications that challenge the commercial and bureaucratic colonization of the public sphere of opinion formation. Freee occupies the public sphere with works that take sides, speak their mind and divide opinion.
Freee is interested in the traffic between the gallery and the street, between art’s institutions and everyday culture, and between art and politics. Works in the gallery are neither the originals of works that appear on billboard sites nor are they documents of them. Each version is simply another instance of the very same work, like a song performed at various venues, or, more pointedly, like a slogan appearing in a pamphlet, on a badge or in a chant.
Our practice attempts to activate a debate that encourages active agents rather than passive respondents and to address the issue of the spectator in art. We utilize text and speech in order to by-pass ideas of interpretation and address the audience as directly as possible. Text operates for Freee as a means to disseminate opinions, there is no authentic moment of viewing the artwork it operates differently for both primary and secondary audiences but neither has precedence over the other. We appear in our recent text works holding or wearing the words: Freee are not celebrities; we are present in the work as a strategy to stand up for what we believe in it.
In terms of the dissemination of ideas our work has been concerned with notions of the public sphere and what Jurgen Habermas describes as opinion formation. Public sphere is a term that is often confused with public realm, public space and public sector but a public sphere can happen in any space whether public or private – it is the space where ideas are discussed and opinions formed.
Key works include: ‘Advertising For All Or; For Nobody At All; Reclaim Public Opinion’, (2008), ‘Advertising Wants To Covert Our Desire For A Better Life Into A Desire To Buy Something’ (2008), ‘Protest Drives History’ (2008) ‘Don’t Let the Media Have the Monopoly on the Freedom of Speech’ (2007), ‘Protest is Beautiful’ (2007) and ‘Fight Against Multiculturalism Commodifying Your Difference’ (2008), are billboard posters which reclaim a version of public space normally dominated by commercial interests. The artists typically stand together holding a physical object that spells out a slogan. For the slogan to be readable at all, then, the collective assembly overrides the mass produced opinions offered up by the spectacle's commodification of dissent.
In the video works ‘How to Talk to Buildings’ (2006) and ‘How to Talk to Public Art’ (2006), Freee turn the tables on civic space. In the former, the relationship between architecture and the ordinary citizen is subject to reversal as individuals stand in front of buildings to tell their own stories. In the latter, the artists carry placards and banners to public monuments in Manchester, protesting against them briefly for the camera.
Paul O’Neil reviewed the exhibition How to Make a Difference in Art Monthly in November 2007. Freee’s Functions series has also been reviewed in Art Monthly and has been used by art writers to support a series of debates on the public sphere, The neo-imperialist function of public art is to clear a path for aggressive economic expansion, was written about by Malcolm Miles in his book Cities and Cultures, published by Routledge, 2006.
See www.freee.org.uk
March 2009 |
Artists/Organisatons
Data Wall:
AESD: Agency for Economy and Space Development:
Maziar Afrassiabi, Shahin Afrassiabi,
Sam Basu, John Colenbrander,
with thanks to Julian Meinold and
Piers O'Hanlon
NIS: New International School: Matthew Stock
Treignac Projet: Sam Basu,
Elizabeth Murray.
The Real:
Phyllida Barlow, Tom Burr,
Anne Damer, Karin Ruggaber,
Audrey Reynolds, Fergal Stapleton,
Brian Wall, Martin Westwood.
Oysters Ain't:
Karen Ay, Vanya Balogh,
Fiona Banner, Richard Bartle,
David Batchelor, Rob Beckett,
Simon Bill, Hartmut Bohm,
Jake & Dinos Chapman,
Cedric Christie, Steve Claydon,
Clem Crosby, Cullinan+Richards,
Penelope Curtis, Arnaud Desjardin,
Valerie Driscoll, Richard Ducker,
Garth Evans, Urs Fischer,
FREEE ( Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt &
Mel Jordan), John Gibbons,
Tom Gidley, Paul Gildea,
Katherine Gili, Andrea Giulivi,
Stewart Gough, Naum Gabo,
Robin Greenwood, Brian Griffiths,
Zoe Griffiths, Nicola Hicks,
Peter Hide, Flore Nove-Josserand,
Helene Kazan, Michael Kidner,
Philip King, Simon Liddiment,
Ed Lipski, Colin Lowe,
Sarah Lucas, Christina Mackie,
Rebecca Johnson Marshall,
Bruce McLean, Haroon Mirza,
Cathy de Monchaux, Henry Moore,
Zadoc Nava, Paul Neagu,
Lawson Oyekan, Eduardo Paolozzi
, Nicholas Pope, Richard Priestley,
Michael Sandle, Paul Sakoilsky,
Celia Scott, Dallas Seitz,
Meg Shirayama, Jane Simpson,
Anthony Smart, Bob & Roberta Smith,
Richard Smith, Steve Smith,
Sarah Staton, Dan Stevens,
Simon Stringer, Michael Stubbs,
Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger,
Gary Webb, Richard Wentworth,
Keith Wilson, Mark Woods,
Richard Woods, Lars Wolter,
Christian Wulffen.
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LOCATION:
Almond Building,
The Biscuit Factory,
Drummond Road,
Bermondsey,
London
SE16 4DG.
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CONTACT
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