Haunch Of Venison.

art
10/10/2009

Haunch Of Venison.


by Rachel Newsome


Home to a constellation of contemporary art’s leading lights, including Bill Viola, Richard Long, Keith Tyson, Matt Collishaw and Turner Prize nominees Jane & Louise Wilson, Nathan Coley and Zanina Bhimji the both venally and poetically titled Haunch Of Venison, has demonstrated itself as neither dusty and retiring nor afraid of the fast lane.


Launched by Harry Blain and Graham Southern, both formerly of Christies, in 2002, subsequent branches in Berlin and New York alongside plans to expand into Beijing and Shanghai, mean that after only seven years in the business, Haunch is already on track to becoming an art super brand.

While gaining a strong reputation for looking after its artists, Haunch has not been shy of courting controversy, most notably, when in 2007 it was bought by Christies International. Although the deal allowed Haunch to retain its independence (no Haunch artist can be auctioned through Christies, for example), it did not stop certain quarters of the art world throwing their arms up in horror at the gallery’s apparent eagerness to bed the Devil/dirty world of commerce, prompting Nicholas Logsdail of the Lisson to ask; “Is this about business or art? Artists need freedom of spirit.”

Remaining ebullient in the face of criticism and confident in that of recession, Blain explained his vision to Frieze at a party held in his honour at last year’s fair thus; “I wouldn’t call it excessive exuberance, I would call it indulging one’s passions for what’s going on.” 

In a continuation of Blain’s self-confessed passion for indulging in what’s going on, in March this year, Haunch made its most flamboyant move so far. This was to leave behind its modestly beautiful building off Bond Street in order to lease for three years the extravagantly beautiful and labyrinthine former Museum of Mankind from the Royal Academy. Renting the 21,000 square foot Georgian building for a cool £4.25 million, overnight Haunch became the largest commercial gallery in London and one of the grandest commercial galleries in the world. 

A bold move at any time, but never more so than in the nadir of a recession, yet again Haunch drew criticism, this time for expanding too fast with the closure of its Zurich space just as Burlington Gardens opened. Then its opening show, “Mythologies”, a homage to the building’s ethnographic heritage featuring a Hirst skull painting, Tim Noble and Sue Webster shadow puppets and Chinese artist Hyungkeo Lee’s enlarged skeletons of Tweetie Pie, received luke-warm reviews, with The Guardian’s Jonathon Jones describing it as “a grim show”.

Rather scathingly, Jones went on; “It (Haunch) wants to be taken seriously and be seen to be doing the right thing by its roster of artists. (Nowadays all commercial galleries would like to be regarded as serious and dependable, showing work that has long-term value – even while they are laying off staff, downsizing or clinging on with white knuckles and the rictus of optimism that comes free with every facelift.”
If art is about ideas, imagination and aesthetics, it is also about sex, money and power and has ever been thus. Yet the debate between purity and pragmatism, commercial hand cuffs and artistic freedom with all the issues it raises about integrity rages on… The story goes that Tate Modern’s big Autumn number, which examines such themes as the art as a commodity and the artist as a brand with all the usual suspects, Warhol, Hirst, Koons, Emin etc, was originally going to be called Sold Out, until one of the exhibitors (the rumour has it was Hirst) protested, and the rather more anodyne Pop Life was landed upon. Meanwhile, collectors are buying but they are buying for 25% less, which means tough times require tough measures.

Back at Haunch and beneath the decorative floral medallions of its high ceiling-ed chambers, Dan Flavin’s flesh pink strip lights and Donald Judd’s industrial blocks blink and jut alongside theh work of lesser known but equally radical European contemporaries, Enrico Castellani and Gunther Uecker whose nail paintings from a distance look like the fur of a metal pelt. There is also a show by Swiss artist Uwe Witter, whose spectral work explores Walter Benjamin’s idea of how images somehow exude an “aura”, so creating a space somewhere between the material and immaterial plus work by art hoaxer Jamie Shovlin, too.

And then there are Thomas Heatherwick’s extrusions –in which the innovative designer has used the world’s largest extrusion machine to produce the world’s first single piece of furniture in the shape of a mirror-polished aluminium bench (in the final piece, the original is divided into six benches), squeezed out rather like excrement from a giant anus. Which is not in any way meant to be derogatory, since is shit, or is it not, really gold? 

This month, the gallery will also show work Jonas Bergert, whose post-apocalyptic paintings drip in psychedelic oranges and limes and show mythic worlds within mythic worlds constructed from sets inhabited by zombie Christs, indigenous tribesmen, dwarves, Victorian gentlemen and strange William Burroughs-esque characters in gas masks, and which throw more than a passing nod to the ethnography of the building’s rich past. Then in November, Haunch will show the poetic chandeliers of designer Stuart Haygarth painstakingly constructed from the lenses of discarded glasses. 

The emerging and established, living and dead, iconic and iconoclastic, reliable and risk-taking, old favourites and new discoveries. . . six months into its new home, it would seem that Haunch has taken this vast, awe-inspiring space and run with it.

“What we have here at Burlington Gardens,” says Haunch Director of Exhibitions, Ben Tufnell, “Is an extraordinary opportunity where we can create interesting conversations between younger and older artists. There’s a willingness here to push the envelope and find different ways of doing things.”
 
Tufnell goes on; “Moving into this building was a terrifying moment. We had to be creative and a little bit entrepreneurial. And things have changed. Three years ago I could propose an exhibition because it’s great and not worry about any commercial dimension, while now that always has to be at the back of your mind. We have a balance. There are some shows that you just know you’re lucky if you cover you’re costs but they’re worth doing because they’re good projects but we balance them with the bigger shows. Even then, you never actually know. Nothing is predictable in this world, it’s all about random. What’s good is that we have space to mess with things in the programme. It doesn’t have to be all neat and tidy.”

For every commercial limit the gallery might have to impose, it is this willingness to embrace the beauty and on occasion, chaos, of randomness that allows it the potential, also, to be liberating. 

Says Heatherwick of Extrusions; “There was an experimental idea, an industrial idea and an artistic idea and Haunch were behind all of it. We weren’t deciding whether it was called art, architecture, design or sculpture. I felt that was a step forward. In the traditional world, art galleries are for people who call themselves artists. But for me, it’s like if you have a great meal and you call it art. It’s a qualitative judgement and a personal judgement. It’s not absolute. Plus it’s in the old Museum of Mankind and I’ve spent time there drawing relics. They are real objects and artistic objects with high value. It’s why I felt a connection to the gallery.”

A smart commercial move - at between £25,000 and £40,000 (and therefore “affordable” art) Heatherwick’s work is also selling - and a smart idea? It is Tufnell’s belief that not only can one enable the other, but that the relationship begins with creating the right context for smart ideas to flourish. 
“We have more freedom,” he says, “Because we’ve got galleries in New York and Europe and London, so we can create more opportunities to create an audience for our artists. I’ve always felt that the commercial stuff is a knock on effect of great shows and scholarly catalogues and helping artists to make great work. If you set up the connections and the studio visits, then the commercial stuff falls into place.”
In marketing terms, the idea of putting a culture in place before strategy is known as establishing a “culture of revolution”. But joining the dots between God and the new Jerusalem via Malcolm McLaren and punk, what it really comes down to is “build it and they will come”. Or in the case of Haunch, lease it and they will come. 

And according Tufnell, that is exactly what’s beginning to happen; “Various conversations are happening with artists that are not about doing one off things. There are some major artists out there who can take on a space like this and we want to make the most of this tremendous opportunity.”


www.haunchofvenison.com

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