From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up, 2016

"A pair of shoes, black-and-grey suede Nikes with red soles and no laces, is set down on a plain white table. From a fixed, bird's eye perspective, a camera records as one hand reaches down to lift a shoe, and another begins threading a lace carefully through its eyelets. Once both shoes are laced, they are swapped for a second pair of white leather Nikes, and the same process begins. Next up is a pair of dress shoes, black leather lace-ups, which we watch being brushed and polished until they positively gleam. These are the first few minutes of the artist Thomas J Price's 2016 two-channel moving image work From the Ground Up. For the rest of the work's 26-minute duration, the same pattern
repeats, an array of footwear placed down on the white surface
to be slowly laced, cleaned and cared for with all the love and
attention bestowed on one's most valued possessions.

It might seem strange to describe a person's relationship to their footwear as one of love and care, but, as the field of material culture studies has taught us, objects matter; things matter. Branded sneakers, a car, an iPhone, a historic monument towering over a public square: the things we buy, wear, look at, trade, and destroy have an immense power to shape our constantly evolving senses of who we are and of the world around us. Art, too, falls into the category of stuff, in spite of (and as proven by) conceptualism attempts to "de-materialize" the art object in the second half of the twentieth century. What is special about art, however, is its potential to channel consciousness through physical matter, as-to quote from Petra Lange-Berndt's 2015 contribution to the Documents of Contemporary Art series, 'Materiality', "materials become wilful actors and agents within artistic processes, and enmesh their audience in a network of connections."

Material Matters: on the recent work of Thomas J Price
Gabrielle Schwarz, London, September 2017